


What Fates Impose

by Frea_O



Series: The Fatesverse [1]
Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Bunker, Epic, F/M, Gen, Long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-28
Updated: 2012-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-31 20:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 68
Words: 439,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years alone in a bunker is no picnic for anybody, especially not Chuck Bartowski, forgotten CIA agent that never got kicked out of Stanford. When Bryce Larkin sends him the Intersect and plunges his world into doubt, Chuck must learn to survive in a world of lies and espionage. Luckily, he has the CIA's top spy, Sarah Walker, at his side. REPOST after accidental deletion. Cold Meds and exhaustion and ficcing don't mix, kids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. From Siberia, With Love

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story that starts off slowly, and is still in progress. I stick to a canon timeline, with a few exceptions (which will be noted). This was started during the Nuclear Winter that was Season Three of Chuck. I thought, "What if Chuck had joined the CIA? And what if it had sucked?" And the story that came out surprised me completely.

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul. — _Ella Wheeler Wilcox_

**26 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**BUNKER 77142135**   
**06:00 OMST**

Chuck Bartowski’s alarm rang. He didn’t need it—he’d been awake for an hour, staring at the underside of the bunk above his, his eyes empty, his brain far away. When the blare cut into the silence, he reached without looking and shut the beastly thing off. He gave himself two more minutes personal time before slowly and creakily rolling out of the bed.

As always, it was a big mistake. The cold air rushed in the instant he unzipped the sleeping bag, surrounding him and making him shiver. For the next eighteen hours, he would receive only a few minutes of true warmth.

He left his parka on the hook. To call the space “contained” was stretching it—the bunker was tiny, barely room for a regular-sized person to walk around with anything approaching comfort. Chuck, who’d outgrown most of the population as a teenager, always had to duck. He winced as he sat down in the narrow space between the bunks—the floor was always frigid. With the ease of long habit and routine, he began to stretch. With October just around the corner, things were already beginning to cool, which meant that it took his muscles that much longer to limber out so that he could go through his morning routine.

Suitably stretched, he rose and began moving with the fluidity of the Tai Chi he’d altered for himself. He was hampered somewhat by the lack of space, but he’d long grown used to that. He closed his eyes and just tuned everything out—random chatter from his current projects, the regular undercurrent of minor claustrophobia and misery and angst, the constant wonder. Inside his head, it grew blissfully silent.

Until the alarm rang again, signaling that it was time to shower, eat, and face the day.

He stepped through a steel door and into the only properly-heated room in the bunker, hurrying so that he wouldn’t let too much heat out. He stripped out of his gear. Even though he’d left the parka outside, he still wore thermal underwear, an ancient Army T-shirt, sweatpants, and the makeshift padding he’d crafted from his old partners’ rejected parkas. It made him look like the kid who’d enjoyed far too many cupcakes, but it beat freezing to death. He stowed each article with care on the shelves he’d constructed just inside the heat tube, where they wouldn’t get wet while he showered. And turning the heat on full, he stepped into the narrow shower to scald himself for exactly fourteen minutes.

Any longer than that and he would be late for his shift.

The worst thing about everything was the monotony. Day-in, day-out, the same routine. Wake up, perform exercises to keep from going crazy. Shower. Report into work, receive the day’s assignments. Work until 17:30. Log off, spend two hours surfing the internet through a firewall. Eat dinner. Read a book. Go to bed. He was allowed to leave the bunker twice a month to go into the small town seven kilometers away, but in the winter, it was hardly worth fighting the cold. And he didn’t speak Russian. He used the two trips just to stretch out his legs, though he hadn’t gone the last couple of months. Things just kept coming up.

Fully dressed, hair as dry as it could get—it was almost time to shave his head so that his hair wouldn’t be wet for too long in the mornings—Chuck hurried out of the heat tube and crossed to the opposite end of the bunk room. He pushed through another steel door into the kitchen. A table ate up most of the room; they’d wedged a cooling unit in the corner to store perishables. Not that there was much perishable about military MREs. 

Chuck opted for the minestrone for breakfast. He was due for a new shipment soon, and his options were limited to the foods he’d put off eating. Why did he do this to himself? He’d at least saved the muffins that had come with this last shipment for a record six days.

Clutching the MRE, he continued on through the kitchen to the office. It might have been the roomiest section of the bunker, had the government not seen fit to wedge every type of computer monitor along one wall, with a fearsome old soviet desk taking up whatever space was leftover. Overhead, the lights washed everything with the sickening gray sort of tinge Chuck found popular in horror movies where a zombie or two might show up to snack on his brain.

He plopped into the chair, grateful that the padding he’d sacrificed for it at least made the thing comfortable. The single monitor on the desk was black, save for one small line of green text.

LOG ON.

Chuck tapped his login information, hit enter, and didn’t bother to sigh. Just another day in the wonderful wilds of Siberia.

 **26 SEPTEMBER 2007**  
 **BUNKER 77142135**  
 **10:02 OMST**

Chuck had just finished decrypting the latest in a series of inter-agency emails for his boss—the mysteriously named Mr. Carver—when the email arrived. He took no notice of it at first. Personal emails from the few contacts he was allowed to reach out to were restricted to a small computer monitor off to the side. He did his primary work on a huge flat-screen monitor just above his head on the wall, controlling everything through the monitor on the desk. He heard the chirp of an incoming email, but ignored it to finish watching the YouTube video that Mr. Carver had emailed to him. A couple more viewings, slowed to frame-by-frame at points, confirmed that there were no hidden coding within the video. Chuck felt confident in reporting to Mr. Carver that no, the YouTube video about the cute kittens falling into a birdbath was _not_ secretly a training video for a liberal Jihadist terrorist cell.

It was days like these, he thought as he finished the report and sent it whizzing away into the ether, that made all the difference. Because he was rotting away in a bunker in Siberia, the world was safe from kitten-faced propaganda.

His wristwatch—a gift from Uncle Sam—beeped, letting him know that his fifteen-minute break for the morning had arrived. Chuck stretched his shoulders, his back. The office was the only room in the place where he could stand without having to duck, which meant that for several hours a day, he worked on his feet, controlling the computers with a joystick he’d modified out of sheer boredom. He stood now and began to shake out his legs.

The blinking email icon caught his attention. Excitement—finally something to break the monotony!—had him scrambling to check.

Bryce Larkin. Now that was odd. His old roommate and co-CIA agent usually didn’t get in touch via email. It fit with the super secret agent lifestyle that Bryce wouldn’t want much hard copy that could connect him to anything. And he understood Chuck’s situation, so more often than not he called via satellite phone. Sometimes even to catch up.

Chuck clicked the email open. There wasn’t a subject or even any text in the body. Just quite a large attachment.

Standford.zrk? What kind of file was that? Chuck checked his watch—11 minutes left of his break. Plenty of time to check the email and see what was going on. He double-clicked the attachment, surprised when the file opened without needing to be sent through a cipher. Immediately, the screen went black, and words scrolled across.

The Terrible Troll Raises His Sword.

Zork? Bryce wanted to get back into Zork? Really? Chuck blinked at the computer screen a couple of times. Where on earth were Bryce Larkin and Sarah Walker that Bryce had time to reignite old computer games from their Stanford days? Apparently Chuck’s old roommate and his classic beauty of a partner had some downtime.

Well, if Bryce wanted to bring up Zork again, Chuck was game. He shrugged to himself a little as he searched his memory and typed, “Attack…troll…with…nasty…knife.”

The screen went black again.

And now, Chuck thought, here comes the battle, and maybe Bryce has programmed a little something extra—

Only the battle never came. Instead, there was a flicker—a picture of binoculars? Another picture—a guy getting his eye inspected, athletes on a track, dogs running, the pope. Apple pie. Chuck took a step back, trying to figure out exactly what was going on. Something strange seemed to be happening inside his head. Everything in his brain bogged down, became logy. He tried to look away from the screen, but couldn’t pull his gaze away. So he watched, standing, while image after image, video after video, blurred and seared and burned into his mind. Before long, it all became a blur. He didn’t hear his watch beep, didn’t see the multitude of emails and text messages from Mr. Carver. He just stood for hours with his eyes glued to the screen—

Until the computer clicked off on its own.

Chuck did the only thing he could. He passed out.

**26 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**BUNKER 77142135**   
**17:22 OMST**

Repeated chirping drove Chuck out of the fog and into the cold. Everything in his body ached—his muscles in particular, as he’d apparently slid down the wall and now lay in a cockamamie position, legs spread, one arm trapped behind him, head lolling on one shoulder. Chuck lifted his head on his sore neck and shook it as he looked around for the source of the chirping.

Oh. Right. He’d set the satellite phone on the wall to chirp rather than ring—it startled him less that way.

Chuck slowly climbed to his feet, feeling every part of his body in excruciating detail as he did so. What on earth had happened? Had he passed out? Had he slipped and hit his head? When he closed his eyes, there were strange images, black and white and grainy like old pictures, burned into the backs of his eyelids. Chuck shook his head to make them go away as he picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Tell them you fell and hit your head.”

Chuck blinked. “Bryce? What the—”

“Tell them not to send medical.”

And Chuck was left with a dial tone.

Now that was cryptic. Confused, Chuck stared first at the phone in his hand and then at the computer monitors, all of which were blinking with alerts. The monitor with his private email had gone blank.

Mr. Carver, it appeared, seemed to be beside himself. AGENT GEORGES flashed over four of the five monitors, blinking urgently. REPORT IN RE: STATUS.

Chuck shook his head to clear it as he typed a response. I’m fine, he typed, ignoring formality. Just slipped and hit my head.

NEED MEDICAL?

Negative. Just a bump. I’ll put some ice on it.

ARE YOU CERTAIN?

What on earth was Bryce getting at? First the weird email, now the mysterious phone call. But the guy had never steered Chuck wrong. When they’d both been recruited for CIA out of Stanford, Bryce had been his wingman. He’d looked out for Chuck the whole time. Chuck had no reason to start distrusting him now.

I’m fine, he typed again. Agent has sufficient medical supplies to handle problem on sight. Do not need medical.

There was a pause on Mr. Carver’s end. Finally, UNDERSTOOD blinked across all screens. DOES AGENT REQUIRE MEDICAL LEAVE?

Did he? Chuck pondered it for a minute. Yes, his head felt heavy, as though somebody had taken his brain away and replaced it with a newer model made out of lead. And yes, he ached all over from the fall. But nothing that would affect his work.

No, he typed in. I’ll take some pain meds and make up lost time. Please send missed assignments.

It would help keep things off his mind while he waited for Bryce to get over being Agent Ambiguous and get on with the damn explanation. He pulled up the first task—parse another YouTube video—and settled in to work. The video was the latest hit single of some European pop group, supposed to be popular in Israel and hot spots in the Middle East. It seemed like a bunch of too-young hipsters attempting to be cool and failing. As Chuck watched, the video cut to a close-up of the bass guitarist—

It crushed him like a sledge-hammer between the eyes. Everything in his brain ground to a halt—he stared blankly at the wall while a series of images, video, and audio files ran across his brain like it was some sort of demented database.

A picture of a seal balancing a ball on its nose. Video of two women in Victorian dresses strolling along a jumpy London street. NAME: Badrun Farroway. ALIAS: Nick Jones. Dual Citizen of Iran and the United States, born to American father and Iranian mother. Practicing Shiite. Suspected of using record sales to funnel money to alleged terrorists in Kuwait—

The surge of information made his head throb. Chuck gasped in air and stabbed the space bar, stopping the playback. Ten seconds had elapsed since the shot in question.

Where on earth had that come from?! He was good at his job, good at recognizing repeat offenders and catching odd bits of code within videos and other media sources. But never had anything hit with such a deluge of information before. He was positive he’d never even heard of this so-called terrorist funder, Badrun Farroway. So why did Farroway’s dossier exist in his head now?

And how on earth could he explain this to Mr. Carver? In the end, Chuck red-flagged the video, made up a reason, and put in a request for background checks to be done on the band members, particularly the guitar players. He even included a lame joke about always suspecting guitar players, just so that Mr. Carver wouldn’t find anything suspicious.

It happened three more times. Each experience left him feeling vaguely ill, confused, and miserable. Why on earth wasn’t Bryce calling to explain things? What was going on out there?

**26 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**BUNKER 77142135**   
**06:00 OMST**

The alarm rang. Chuck swatted it off. He continued to lie in bed, though he wasn’t staring at the underside of the bunk above his. No, his mind was racing too much for his eyes to really see anything. He’d spent the entire night just staring into the darkness, wondering, and fretting, and frankly, freaking out.

Bryce had yet to call.

Overhead, the lights flickered on with the usual thrum. Chuck sighed as the horror movie lighting returned, thinking of sunny, warm Burbank, where his sister and his best friend were likely just settling down for the night while he rose to face his day. An equally warm and sunny place where a woman he swore never to think about was probably doing the same.

Chuck rolled out of bed and began to stretch, shivering. Why hadn’t the government fixed up the bunker if they were going to stash agents there long-term? And where the hell was Bryce with his explanation?

He waved his arms, controlling the movements and his breathing. Because it was an even day, he stuck to the short routine because he would have to do push-ups and sit-ups today as well. He kept the padding and the insulated pants on because he’d added hooks for extra weights, things around the bunker he’d modified to add resistance when it was obvious he’d surpassed the actual weights Brent had left behind.

Brent was one of the four people he’d seen in the past three years, another CIA analyst that had been bunked in Bunker 77142135 out in the cold darkness of Siberia. He’d done his obligatory three month tour, wedged into the tiny space with Chuck. They hadn’t fought. It was hard to fight when you didn’t talk at all—as he and Brent hadn’t after the first couple of weeks. It had been exactly the same way with Paul, Brent’s predecessor.

When Brent had been transferred to another bunker closer to Moscow, nobody had come to replace him. Budget cuts, Chuck had figured at the time. He wondered when they considered his own time to be up, but Mr. Carver hadn’t mentioned anything about reassignments, and Chuck knew better than to ask.

He pushed everything from his mind and instead relaxed into the movement. He’d never really come close to being one with his Chi or even balancing it or whatever, but the meditation helped. It kept him from climbing up the walls and gnawing on the doorknobs. It made him stanch the impulses that made him want to ignore the work that helped the CIA protect America, and just sit in the corner and rock.

His watch beeped. Chuck took one last calming breath and began hooking his modified weights onto his torso, which would add a fair bit of resistance to his push ups by the time he finished. He turned to reach for the last weight—

And just like that, she was standing in the doorway.

With a gun pointed right at his chest.

**17 NOVEMBER 2005**   
**BUNKER 77142135**   
**12:30 OMST**

Chuck input the last line of data into his report, scanned it absently for typos or anything that would have him brought up in front of a committee. Seeing nothing, he sent it off to the elusive Mr. Carver, the new boss that had arrived a few days before via the hotlink to the bunker. He was used to receiving an immediate reply—just an acknowledgement or the next assignment if he hadn’t been given a list of orders for the day. Today, Mr. Carver remained oddly silent for a full fifteen minutes.

Chuck frowned. Had the hotlink gone down? He half-rose to check on the connections to his servers, but a line of green text blinked across the monitor.

AGENT GRANTED 72 HOURS LEAVE. ENJOY YOUR VACATION, JACKSON GEORGES.

Vacation? Chuck rubbed his eyes, wondering if they were starting to go bad from staring at screens and soldering projects all day. But the line didn’t change.

“What the…”

Another line blinked and joined the first.

NOT AUTHORIZED TO LEAVE LOCATION.

Well, that was more like the US Government Chuck knew and hated. He sighed. So, great. He had 72 hours of leave where he couldn’t actually leave. He’d been putting in for time off, hoping to maybe travel into Moscow so that he could see the famous Red Square and all of the things he’d been dreaming about for years.

Worst. Vacation. Ever.

Shrugging to himself, Chuck switched the monitor feeds so that his personal computer took over the giant monitor above his head. Nothing called like Call of Duty. He played under an alias he’d always liked—Carmichael…Charles Carmichael—but he didn’t dare try to find Morgan anywhere on the game, even though he knew his best friend’s username. The government would shut him down faster than Ellie ever did to Morgan. He’d just donned his headset to frag some noobs—

Somebody pounded on the door. Three times.

Chuck’s heart immediately started hammering. Nobody had come to that door in six months.

The pounding sounded again. He thought he heard a faint, “Chuck!” which made no sense. Even his boss thought his identity was Jackson Georges.

Chuck pulled off the headset and inched forward, wishing the government had at least provided him with a gun for this assignment. Even a tranquilizer gun. Not that he would ever shoot anything more lethal than tranquilizers, but Chuck had always found that it was easier to be menacing when you were armed.

As he drew closer, the person outside thumped the door again. “C’mon, Chuck! Open up!”

Chuck suddenly couldn’t get the door open fast enough. He’d recognized the voice. He scrambled to input the code into the panel by the single door that led to the outside world. He blinked at the flood of daylight that seared his eyeballs, and instinctively threw up an arm to protect his eyes. Even then, there was no mistaking his visitor. “Bryce!”

Bryce just about cracked his spine with the welcoming hug. “Hey! Heard you got some time off.”

“Yeah, like two minutes ago. How did you—you pulled some strings, didn’t you? Come in, come in, it’s cold out there!” And the bunker would be all that much colder for it.

It was then that Chuck noticed that Bryce was definitely not alone. Standing behind his best friend in the tunnel, hands tucked politely into her pockets—though that may have been the cold, come to think of it—was the milk-fed version of Lindsay Fünke.

“Oh,” Chuck managed.

Bryce and Lindsay Fünke squeezed past him into the narrow entrance. He hastened to shut the door behind them, closing all three into a very tiny space. To cover up some of the awkwardness, he asked, “How’d you two get by the perimeter? The alarm never went off.”

“That was all Sarah,” Bryce said, jerking his head at Lindsay Fünke. “Sarah, this is Chuck Bartowski, the best wingman a guy could have. Chuck, my partner, Sarah Walker.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Chuck said, reaching around Bryce.

She shifted her bag and shook the hand he offered. “Likewise. Um, is there somewhere we can put our bags? It’s been a long day.”

Why she would send a death glare Bryce’s way as she said that, Chuck didn’t know. He decided to ignore that particular elephant making the limited space even smaller and cleared his throat. “Right. Good point. Let me give you the tour, show you where you can drop your stuff. Though I warn you, it’ll be a short tour.”

He wedged himself between the pair so that he could get past and lead the way. Why on earth did it feel like the oxygen inside the bunker had been cut in half? 

“How long, uh, are you two planning to stay?”

He missed the look that Bryce and Sarah exchanged behind his back. “A couple of days, if that’s cool with you,” Bryce said, following close on his heels.

The smile Chuck shot over his shoulder was dazzling. “Are you kidding? It’s fantastic! I’ve been going stir-crazy. What, were you guys in the neighborhood or something?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Chuck showed off first the office, leading them into the kitchen—and recommending that they drop their gear on the table since the bunk had limited space—before he finished off the grand tour in the bunk room. “And this is it,” he announced. “Neither of you gets claustrophobic, right?”

Bryce assured him that both were fine. “This is really it?” Sarah, who hadn’t said much, wondered. Both she and Bryce were just tall enough to avoid stooping forward, but Chuck had to duck. “You live here all the time?”

“Home sweet home,” Chuck confirmed. “There’s a lot more room in the kitchen—I can make some coffee if you two want to warm up. And there’s, um, MREs if you’re hungry—”

“Don’t worry. I got the food situation taken care of.” Bryce patted a satchel he hadn’t deposited in the kitchen. He removed something and handed it to Chuck. “Got your favorite, buddy.”

“You are my hero,” Chuck decided, wanting to weep at the sight of the can in his hand.

Sarah leaned around her partner to get a better look. “You brought him Spaghetti-Os?”

“Food of the gods,” Chuck corrected. He set the can reverently on the top bunk, which he had started to use for storage after Brent’s departure. The room contained only two narrow bunks, which meant he’d need to clean the place out. He supposed he’d just have to sleep in his office chair tonight. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Probably best we hang out in here,” Chuck decided, squeezing into the kitchen. He indicated that the others should take the two chairs already present and wheeled his desk chair in to join them. “Tell me news of the outside!”

**17 NOVEMBER 2005**   
**BUNKER 77142135**   
**18:08 OMST**

“So to make a long story short, neither of us is allowed back in Paraguay, and no, we still don’t know what happened to the donkey. Though rumors of his being sighted as far as Albuquerque abound.”

Chuck choked on his cocoa. Though he would normally have gone with coffee, making cocoa had seemed homier somehow. And he didn’t want to subject either of his visitors to the bunker coffee until he absolutely had to. “They kicked you out of the country?!”

“It was recommended,” Sarah said, speaking up for the first time in over an hour, “that we leave. Recommended strongly.”

“With guns,” Bryce added.

Chuck shook his head. “You two live the coolest life,” he decided. “You really took out six guys by yourself, Sarah?”

She crossed her arms. “It was more like eight.”

“Eight?”

“Just another day’s work.” Sarah rose abruptly. “I’m kind of tired. Do you gentlemen mind if I take a nap?”

Chuck stood as well. “Sure—uh, do you need anything? You should take the bottom bunk, it’s the more comfortable of the two. I can go into storage and get you a different sleeping bag, though I promise I shower every day, so the one in the bunk should at least be marginally clean.”

“It’s fine. Thanks.” Sarah slipped by him without another word.

Chuck waited until she had closed the door behind her before he turned to Bryce, eyebrows disappearing into his hairline. “I don’t think your partner likes me much, buddy.”

But Bryce sighed, most of the jollity disappearing now that Sarah had gone. He looked tired, Chuck observed, bone-weary. The only time Chuck had ever seen him like that had been back at Stanford during midterms their last semester together. “It’s not you,” Bryce said, rubbing both hands up the back of his head. “She’s pissed at me and she has every right to be. I promised her we’d be going to Cabo.”

“And you dragged her here instead?” Chuck outright gaped. “Are you an idiot?”

“I wanted her to meet you.” Bryce rose to clean out their used mugs. “I should probably tell you now—I got permission from Headquarters to get you satellite access.”

“What? Why?”

“Because Sarah and I’ve run into trouble before without dedicated tech support. And you’ve got all the know-how and skills to assist.”

“Really? Does that mean I get to go into the field with you?” A sunbeam of hope felt glorious after months and months of darkness. Chuck sat up.

But Bryce squashed all of that with just a small shake of his head. He at least had the decency to look apologetic. “It’s too dangerous since you never finished your training.”

And whose choice was that? It had always rankled that Chuck had been dragged out of his training camp in the middle of the night and shipped off. Sure, he’d been a little slower on some of the physical aspects, and shooting a gun freaked him out, but he’d been catching up. There was absolutely no reason to yank him out so suddenly or completely. Just like there was no reason they should have ever stuck him in a bunker. He wouldn’t have talked about his work if they’d just let him work out of a normal office.

He had some discretion, after all.

Still, since Bryce was a friend and doing him a solid, he tried to hide his dejection. “So I’ll be remote tech support,” he said. “Doing what exactly?”

“Recon, intel. Getting us satellite feeds, maybe do a little hacking if things get hairy. I won’t always be the one able to make the call, so I wanted you and Sarah to meet up. I promise you she’s usually a lot warmer.”

“Literally,” Chuck muttered under his breath. “Please tell me you at least gave the woman some warning that she was going to be dragged out to visit a madman in the middle of Siberia?”

“Uh, sorta?”

“Oh, Bryce, you’re such a dead man walking.” Chuck shook his head. “Wanna see the setup of one Charles Bartowski, cover name Jackson Georges, since you might be placing your life in the hands of my very trusty computer skills?”

“Wasn’t Jackson Georges NSA?”

“Let’s not quibble over details.”

“Didn’t he also go mad?”

“Bryce, that’s the epitome of quibbling.”

All right, all right. Lead on.”

**26 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**BUNKER 77142135**   
**06:22 OMST**

“Sarah?” Chuck blinked, unable to believe he was actually seeing what was right in front of him. When had the hallucinations begun to set in? And why was he hallucinating a woman with a gun and not something much more desirable, like lingerie instead of a thick gray parka? Was this what paranoia felt like? “Sarah Walker? What are you doing—”

“Where is he?” Sarah’s tone brooked no room for argument or disobedience.

“What? Who?”

He knew he should be afraid—guns were _bad_ , after all—but he was stunned too stupid at the sight of Sarah Walker, of all people, in the middle of the bunk room.

“Where is Bryce, Chuck? I know you were helping him with this.”

“Helping him with what?” Chuck felt like he’d been dumped in the middle of a campaign without any way to gain his bearings and, worse, unarmed. He moved his hands away from the weight he’d been hooking to his padding. “What are you talking about? Why on earth would I know where Bryce is? That’s your job! You’re his partner, not me.”

Sarah edged forward a step. Chuck remembered Bryce’s stories about her fearsome marksmanship, but that didn’t matter so much. Even a blind man wouldn’t miss in such a small space. One twitch of one little finger and he was a dead man. “Two weeks ago, you sent him heat-scans from a satellite of a classified area in Washington D.C. Why did you do that?”

Chuck gave her a strange look. “For your mission, duh. You mean, he didn’t show them to you? He said they were for a mission he was working on, so I just assumed you were involved.”

“Did he say I was involved?”

“What? No, I don’t think so, not outright. But then, I didn’t ask. Jeez, why are you pointing a gun at me?” His brain was rapidly shaking off the feeling that he had started going all _A Beautiful Mind_ and that the woman threatening him was indeed not a figment of his imagination. “Sarah, what’s going on? Why are you here? And where’s Bryce?”

“Has he contacted you?”

“What? No, of course he hasn’t—” The mysterious phone call from the day before leaked back in. “He sent me an email. Yesterday.”

“Did you open it?”

“Of course I did!” Chuck stared at her as though she had a few screws loose. “It’s an email from my best friend. I opened it on my break, if you’re worried about me wasting Uncle Sam’s dime—”

“I’m not.” Sarah looked troubled. “I need to see that email, Chuck.”

“Sure, no problem. You can, uh, you can put the gun away. I won’t try anything, I swear.”

“Just show me the email.”

She moved him from the bunk room to the office at gunpoint. Chuck kept his hands up, wincing every time one of his makeshift weights hit against a doorjamb or the table. He had no idea how she had breached the perimeter this time, but both she and Bryce had the code to the door, so he probably really shouldn’t be surprised. His mind whirling, he logged onto his personal computer and—

Nothing happened. The screen remained blank.

Frantic, Chuck tapped a couple more keys, and began swearing.

“What is it?” Sarah demanded.

“My hard drive! What the f—” Chuck continued typing, to no avail. Absolutely nothing happened. Chuck surged to his feet (startling Sarah into tightening her grip on the gun) to check the monitor on the wall. “There wasn’t a heat surge in here, and I _just_ serviced that unit, which means something must have gotten onto my hard drive. But that makes no sense, I modified that virus protection software myself and—Bryce.” It hit him all at once. The last thing he’d done on that computer had been check his email and open the Zork file. Had it been some kind of virus? What if it had been a worm?!

Sarah didn’t seem to notice that he was beginning to hyperventilate. “What about Bryce?”

“I opened the email—it was just a line of text from a video game we used to play back in Stanford. I thought it was just a game, honestly, but then there were all these…pictures…”

“You saw them?” Sarah’s voice rose an octave.

Chuck just swallowed and nodded.

“And then what?”

“I passed out. I don’t know how long I was out.” There was still a knot on the back of his head that screamed whenever he put his hand anywhere near it. “When I came to, my boss, Mr. Carver, he wanted me to report and asked if I needed medical attention, but I got a call from Bryce and—”

The gun actually dug into his shoulder as Sarah jumped in surprise. “You got a what?”

“Bryce, he called me on the satellite phone—”

Switching to a single-handed grip on the gun, Sarah grabbed the phone from the wall with her free hand. She immediately began poking buttons, and cursed when the screen read “Number Blocked.”

“Sarah, what’s going on?” Chuck asked for what felt like the fifteenth time. “Ever since I opened that email, I’ve been having these, these spurts of, I don’t know, insight or something. And I know things I shouldn’t know about some very, very bad people. Why do I know that?”

Sarah stared at him for a long time. At last, at long last, she lowered the gun and shoved it back into her waistband, out of his reach. “Chuck, what I’m about to tell you is top secret. I had to call in a lot of favors to keep this suppressed, so I need your word that you’ll keep your mouth shut.”

“Done,” Chuck said. “Now tell me what the hell is going on!”

“Bryce Larkin is a rogue agent wanted by the CIA.”

“Since when?!”

“Since he broke into a secure holding facility twenty-four hours ago. He bombed a supercomputer that the NSA and the CIA are calling the Intersect—it’s a computer powerful enough to encode subliminal data into messages that can be cross-referenced by both agencies. Bryce destroyed not only the computer, but all of the files as well, but not before he downloaded them and sent them to you. He’s since gone off the grid, though he may be injured.”

“I watched the pictures,” Chuck whispered, his head spinning. It grew harder to breathe, like trying to suck in mud instead of air. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. I was sent out to find him and to secure the copy he sent you.” Sarah glanced at the dead computer unit. “Was that the only copy?”

“Yes, I have a program that automatically downloads my emails to my hard drive and deletes them off the server.” Chuck pushed both hands through his hair, still trying to pull in breath. “It doesn’t make any sense, Sarah. Bryce loves his country. He’d give up his life before he would turn rogue or traitor or whatever. There’s gotta be something else going on here.”

“There’s not.” Sarah looked troubled. “But Bryce has successfully managed to make it so that you’ve now become a super-computer—and property of the United States government.”

The knowledge tore through him and, faced with a beautiful woman or not, he wanted to break down in tears. His ego simply didn’t care. “Oh, God,” he groaned. “They’re going to stick me in an underground bunker. Again. My term was up in _two_ _months_! I was almost done! What the hell? Why would Bryce do this to me?”

“Right now, it looks like you and Bryce were in on this together,” Sarah told him, her calmness a direct contrast to the miring despair making everything inside of Chuck want to sink into a deep, dark oblivion.

“We weren’t,” Chuck whispered, staring at the blank monitor screens. Suddenly, it seemed absolutely vital that somebody, anybody believe him. “Sarah, I wouldn’t. Ever. Okay, so yeah, maybe the CIA wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be when they recruited me at Stanford, but I still love my country. I did this to protect my friends, my family. I’m not a traitor.”

“I believe you.”

“You—you do?” Something built up underneath Chuck’s sternum. It had been so long that it took him a minute to recognize the feeling for what it was: hope. “Really?”

“Really.” Sarah sighed and rubbed both hands over her face, obviously tired. “But now we have problems.”

“Like?”

“Proving to the government you’re innocent. Normally, my word would be all that they need, but with Bryce’s betrayal…” Sarah let that trail off. “Right now, you’re unprotected in the middle of nowhere.”

“And when they figure everything out…” Chuck swallowed hard. “I’m going back into a bunker for the rest of my life, aren’t I?”

“One thing at a time, Chuck.”

“The only way I’ve been able to stay here was because there was an end. I can’t do this again, Sarah. I can’t let everybody else live life and stay locked up for forever.” Chuck ran his hands through his hair. “I’ll—I’ll kill myself before that happens.”

“Chuck.” Sarah grabbed his chin with a hand to get his attention. Chuck immediately froze. It was the first human contact he’d had in nearly two years—since she’d hugged him good-bye upon leaving with Bryce, actually. He felt his heart, already speeding, race even faster. “One. Thing. At. A. Time. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now, take me through everything, from the beginning, start with the plans.”

Chuck obeyed, trying to use just as much detail as he would for any of his reports for Mr. Carver. Sarah listened to everything, her arms crossed and a contemplative frown on her face.

When he’d finished, the frown deepened. “None of that helps me much, except it confirms that Bryce intended you to open the email. Otherwise he would have made the code harder.”

“I agree. And thank you, for not making fun of me for playing Zork.”

A hint of a smile—the first since she’d barged into the bunker—curled one side of Sarah’s mouth. “It doesn’t help that Bryce made you an unwitting accomplice. I’m not sure how secure this station is, or who to trust. This is big, Chuck.”

“Huge,” Chuck agreed “So how can we know who to trust?”

“All of my usual contacts are out,” Sarah muttered, mostly to herself. “I don’t know if Bryce was working with any of them, and I don’t have time to check and keep an eye on you. We’re going to have to run.”

“W-what?”

“Pack up anything essential that you need, but be warned, we’ll need to travel quickly, so nothing heavy. Don’t worry about clothes—we can buy those along the way.”

Chuck didn’t move. “Are you crazy? We can’t just run away.”

“Chuck, if you stay here, people are coming here to arrest you. People who will have no idea what you have in your head. So they’re not going to employ the proper fail-safes to protect you or worse, they’ll be taking you for their own gain should they find out you’re a walking government database who hasn’t been through torture resistance training.”

Chuck turned a shade of green that had nothing to do with the horror movie fluorescents.

“Exactly,” Sarah said. “So we run, and we set up a meet once I’ve vetted the people to make sure they’re safe.”

“Just like that?”

“There’ll be more to it, but right now, all you have to know is, yes. Just like that. Now go, pack your things.” When he didn’t move fast enough to suit her, she hauled on his arm, yanking him to his feet in a show of strength that warned him not to cross her. He hurried through the kitchen and into the bunker, hurriedly shedding weights. He hadn’t showered yet, but that hardly seemed to matter in the grand scheme of things. Sarah had probably dealt with worse.

He’d daydreamed about leaving the bunker time and again. Had planned exactly how to do it, down to what he would wear, what he would say to the agent replacing him. Which things to flip off on the way out.

Now he ignored all of that, scrambling to grab the basics of what he’d need. His gadgets, for sure. The lightweight ones that could be slipped into pockets and not traced. He pulled on the inconspicuous black shoes as opposed to the furry knee boots he usually wore, drew his parka on over the padding. Though he hated the gear, he couldn’t seem to shed it right now. It was…familiar.

He had a feeling he’d need the familiar soon.

He’d just loaded the last of his pockets, his fingers checking a hidden seam in his parka to be sure, when Sarah ducked into the room. Chuck yanked his hand out as though he’d burned himself.

“Is there a way you can set it up so that nobody will notice you’re gone for a few hours?” she asked. “You report in daily, don’t you?”

“More like hourly. But yeah, I actually figured this one out ahead of time.” He hurried back into the office and began typing furiously at the keyboards. “Bryce gave me the idea when you came to visit, just in case I wanted to take a day off. I coded a program that will reply to my boss using a series of pre-generated responses and reports. It’s a data entry program, actually, that I modified using—actually, you probably don’t need to know that.” Chuck switched computers, his fingers never slowing.

“Have you tested it out?”

“Um, a couple of times. My, um, team on Call of Duty was having a raid and…” At Sarah’s incredulous stare, Chuck shuffled his feet defensively. “Look, I get two days off every _month_. I figured a couple of hours playing Call of Duty wasn’t going to hurt anything. And yes, the intel’s completely bogus when I use this program, but I always double-checked whatever video Mr. Carver sent me to look over, okay? I wasn’t slacking.”

“Okay. Sorry. I wasn’t judging.”

Chuck completed the code and hit enter. He was logging on a little early for the day, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. Maybe Mr. Carver would just think he was making up for lost time from the day before. “Okay, it’s set. I’m ready to go.”

“Where’s your bag?”

“You said not to worry about clothes. I grabbed MREs for us to eat on the way, but this is all I have that’s important to me.” Chuck’s grin almost contained actual humor when he looked down at his outfit. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

“Smart,” Sarah corrected. “You never know when you’re going to need to travel light. One last thing—I need you to grab the hard drive out of the computer.”

Chuck shrugged. “Okay.” He wriggled under the desk. A couple of minutes later, he emerged holding a flat piece of computer equipment. “Your hard drive, as ordered. What are you planning to do with it?”

“Pop it in the first mailbox we see and ship it to an undisclosed location. C’mon.” Sarah grabbed the cuff of his parka and led the way to the exit. She gestured at him to input the code; when he had, she went through the door first, her gun out and her body tense. Expecting trouble, Chuck realized. She jerked her head at him in a “move it!” fashion.

He didn’t move.

The sun was just beginning to roam over the world, lighting the edges of the sky and casting everything in early gloom. Chuck stared out the door and the narrow tunnel beyond. The tunnel that would lead out into a world where the sky stretched forever, and there was nothing around him, no walls to keep him safe. No computers. No heat tube, no bunk room, no office. He hadn’t set foot outdoors in months.

It didn’t seem to help to remind himself that waiting inside would only get him stuck permanently, handed over to foreign enemies, or killed. Chuck’s feet could literally not move from the tiles just inside the door.

Impatient, Sarah doubled back. “What is it?”

“I, uh—” Sweat popped all over Chuck’s skin as he stared through the tunnel. “I, I’m not sure, I’m not sure if I can, uh, if I can do this.”

“What? Of course you can.” Sarah tugged on his cuff once more.

Chuck didn’t move. “I haven’t left the bunker in nearly a year, Sarah. I can’t do this. I’ll just slow you up and you said so yourself, you need to find Bryce—”

“Chuck.” Sarah shifted so that she blocked his entire view of the tunnel, so that he would have to focus on her and nobody else. She was only a few inches shorter than him, which meant that she could block his view easily. He had no choice but to meet her gaze. “I want you to do me a favor.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You can.” Sarah’s grip tightened over his cuff—he could feel the pressure through the layers of cloth around his wrist. “I want you to trust me, Chuck. I’m going to protect you, and keep you safe.”

Chuck forced himself to swallow through a throat that ached. “Where are we going?”

“To the end of the tunnel, to my car. And then we’re driving to the nearest train station. It’s going to be okay.”

His heart, which really hadn’t received a break since Sarah had pointed a gun at his chest and declared his best friend a traitor, clocked new land speed records. He felt sweat begin to slide its greasy way down places like the back of his neck and inside his wrists. Black and white sparks began to erupt around the edges of his vision, making him blink. He wanted to run inside, to sprint for the bunk room, and to fling himself back into his sleeping bag. Wanted to pull the bag over his head and ignore everything, hoping it would all go away.

But he wasn’t a kid anymore. Pulling the sleeping bag over his head wouldn’t slay the monsters anymore. This time, the monsters were real—and they would kill him if he stayed in the bunker.

So he did it. He took the first step—and he put his life in Sarah Walker’s hands.


	2. Go Fish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. — _Mark Twain_

**18 NOVEMBER 2005**  
 **BUNKER 77142135**  
 **01:18 OMST**

“Oh, you’re awake.”

Sarah glanced up in surprise to see Chuck sitting at the kitchen table, his head bent low over a soldering project. Nonetheless, she finished closing the door to the bunk room behind her without making noise. “I thought you were asleep,” she told him.

Chuck set the soldering iron in its holster, wincing when he realized that the kitchen smelled of molten metal. He was still adjusting to having others nearby to consider. “I can’t seem to sleep—figured I’d use up the extra energy.”

Remembering that he was the host in this situation, he rose and began to put his current project away. “Can I, um, get you anything? I can heat you up some Spaghetti-Os—I don’t recommend the MREs I usually eat, though come to think of it, you might not mind them so much. They’re actually pretty tasty. They’re just, you know, the only thing I have to eat, so I’m kind of tired of them—”

Sarah smiled. “It’s okay. I’ll just have an MRE.”

“All right.” Chuck didn’t have to move to open the cupboard. “Pick your poison. We’ve got—oh.” He trailed off when Sarah merely grabbed the closest one at hand. “Want me to show you how to heat that—never mind. You apparently know your way around the MRE.”

Sarah just completed her ministrations that would eventually heat the MRE completely. “I’ve been out in the field a few times.”

“I can see that. Have a good nap?”

“Actually, yes. The cot’s actually pretty comfortable. Bryce is out for the count.” Sarah began to disassemble the Meal, Ready to Eat and glanced about for a cup to mix the powder drink with water.

“I wouldn’t trust that if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“It’s by far the dodgiest of the entire variety. Here, I’ll mix up my specialty.”

While Chuck dug out all of the supplies he would need, Sarah began to work her way through the instant meal, steadily and without seeming to taste much. It was probably the best way to demolish an MRE, in Chuck’s opinion. He noticed that she ate everything with the mindset of a woman who was never sure when the next meal would be, but he didn’t comment. He was too busy concentrating on moving around in such a small space. Normally it wasn’t a problem, but now he had a complete stranger to contend with, and—well, beautiful women made him nervous to start off. And Sarah Walker was like the female counterpart to Bryce Larkin’s devastating good looks. The CIA couldn’t have put two prettier people together if they’d tried.

“So what is it you do, Chuck?” Sarah asked once she’d finished the main course and Chuck had located his empty milk gallon.

“I’m an analyst. I analyze various data sources to make sure they’re not being used by terrorist groups to pass encrypted messages.”

“Sounds important.”

“I guess.” Chuck measured out the powder.

Sarah launched into something long and in another language—he figured Russian, though he had no idea why. “Say what now?” he asked without turning.

She was silent for a second. “You don’t speak Russian?”

“Nyet.”

“So why do they have you stashed in the middle of Siberia?”

Now Chuck did turn. “One of life’s greatest mysteries,” he said. “There were two guys here before me, and two with me at separate points. They all listened to Russian chatter and the like, but me, I’m an English-only kind of guy with the occasional foray into bad Spanish. I’ve no idea why they stashed me here.”

“Aren’t you at least a little bit curious?”

He’d spent several months burning up with curiosity, but that had led ultimately nowhere. And curiosity, pushed for too long, became an exhausting mantle to bear. “Not really. My theory is that they spent too much money on me to just let me go when I apparently failed spy school, so…to the wilds of Siberia it is.” Chuck finished mixing the gallon and produced two glasses from a cupboard under the table. He flourished them and made a show of pouring the orange liquid, handing the first over to Sarah.

“Tang?” she asked after taking a sip. “Really?”

“Really. I live off of this stuff. It’s what they give astronauts, you know.” Chuck capped the gallon and set it on the remaining inch of table left. “It’s the one thing they never forget to send, which is good because the water tastes like crap.”

“Do you actually like Tang?”

Chuck took a long swallow. “Brent used to add vodka to make it better, but me…I’m a whiskey man, myself.”

“Oh, are you now?” Sarah laughed and reached into her jacket, pulling out a flask. She took her time unscrewing the cap and pouring a generous amount into her own cup before she handed the flask over.

Chuck toasted her with it. “You’re my hero.”

“I aim to please.”

When Chuck had doctored his cup, he raised it. “To spies?”

“To spies.”

The whiskey burned, a smooth, reassuring flame straight from throat to gut. Chuck took time to really enjoy it. “It’s been years since I had whiskey. Real whiskey, not the crap Paul used to drink. I miss it.”

“So what do you drink if not water or whiskey?”

“Tang.” Chuck sighed. “Lots and lots of Tang.”

“You’re a stronger person than me, then.”

Chuck gave a humorless chuckle. “Am I? You’re out in the line of fire, kicking butt and taking names. Doing something active while I just sit here on my butt and…drink Tang.”

“Sit here,” Sarah corrected, “apart from all of your friends and family and life, and continue to work for the people who put you here because you believe in justice enough to keep going. Don’t put yourself down.”

“I notice you didn’t mention the Tang,” Chuck pointed out when he regained his voice.

“Like I said, you’re a stronger person than me. And my life is not like the Bond movie you make it sound like.” 

Chuck shrugged. “Probably for the best.”

“Why’s that?” Sarah returned the flask to her jacket and pulled out a deck of cards, wiggling them at him in invitation.

“Oh, just saying. A woman who, um, well, a woman who looks like you has a very low life expectancy in a Bond film. Especially if she’s so obviously on the side of good. It’s like an unwritten law. Bond’s good colleagues tend to die.” Chuck paused to think about it. “Unless you’re Miss Moneypenny. Or M.”

Sarah laughed and began to deal the cards. He could see her shoulders relaxing, something they hadn’t done all afternoon during Bryce’s stories. “Why can’t I be Bond? I mean, we’ve progressed in gender equality, haven’t we? Bond could be a woman.”

Chuck made a _pfft_ noise. “Hello, Bond would clearly have to be Bryce, duh. Those chiseled looks, the blue eyes. Total Bond.”

“Something you want to tell me, Chuck?”

“What?”

Sarah leaned close. For one blinding and heart-stopping second, Chuck couldn’t move. 

“Is there something,” Sarah repeated, “you want to tell me about you and Bryce?”

She’d apparently taken a shower earlier, for she smelled like his soap—or rather, the government issued soap he used. Only it smelled a thousand times better on her. Not one bit astringent or clinical, just the good, solid, tantalizing scent of a woman. In that moment, Chuck understood how it felt to be Al Pacino.

“Chuck?” Sarah asked, uncertainty creeping into her voice.

“What?” Chuck jolted and shook his head, desperately grabbing at any possible thread to the conversation. “What? About me—and—and Bryce? What? _Oh_. No, nothing like that.” He forced a chuckle. “We’ve just been friends for years, and I know what a great guy he is. Very James Bond like. And you have to admit, the guy does have a pretty face.”

“Very true.” Sarah eyed Chuck suspiciously, but let it go. “I still say I should be Bond.”

“How about Bristow?” Chuck offered. “Work for the CIA, travel the world, kick ass, take names?”

“Sounds acceptable.”

“Though between you and me,” Chuck said, leaning in as though sharing a secret, “you look like you can take Sydney Bristow in a fight. Don’t tell Bryce I said that, though. He was always a fan.”

“All right, will do. So…if I’m, as you say, Bristow, and Bryce is Bond, what does that make you?”

Chuck moved his shoulders and stared into his drink. “Tech support? I’m not sure I’m cool enough to be Q.”

“No? Don’t sell yourself short, Chuck.” Seeming to remember the cards for the first time, Sarah picked up the deck and shuffled expertly. “You’re a lot more than tech support.”

“There’s not a lot of characters that sit in bunkers and decode all day.” Chuck picked up the cards she’d dealt and frowned. “What are we playing?”

“What respectable spies always play when bored.” Sarah rearranged her own cards. “Got any sevens?”

“You know what? I don’t. Go fish.”

**27 SEPTEMBER, 2007**   
**TRANS-SIBERIAN EXPRESS**   
**03:17 YEKT**

The train rattled and screeched by turns, clattering on the track and jolting everything inside. Sarah and Chuck had scored a car of their own, thanks to the fact that not many people chose to travel at this hour. Chuck had already attempted to stretch his length along one bench, leaving the other for Sarah, who was having a marginal bit more luck because there wasn’t quite as much of her to stretch. If he moved just a hair, he would be able to see her out of the corner of his eye and study how she lay with her arms crossed, her legs tucked under her. It looked uncomfortable, which was putting how he himself felt mildly.

He kept his face turned to the ceiling. It was easier to ask the hard questions that way.

“Why would he do it?”

She didn’t have to ask who he meant. “I don’t know.”

“I mean, the guy’s like a boy scout—hell, he _was_ a boy scout.”

“Eagle scout,” Sarah murmured.

“So why do this? Why betray his country like this?” Chuck squirmed to get a better position, but somehow only made it worse.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said again.

“You were his partner, surely you noticed someth—”

Sarah moved like a snake. In a blink, she went from lying down to looming over him, a martial set to her features and a handful of his parka in her fist. “I didn’t suspect a thing,” she said in a too-quiet voice. “I saw nothing, okay? I thought things were fine. I even went out and had drinks with him the night he stole the Intersect and, still, I noticed _nothing_!”

Chuck didn’t dare do more than breathe. Even with a lack of human interaction he’d had lately, he knew better than to make any sudden movements when a woman was standing over him with that _look_ in her eye. Still, he couldn’t stop his mouth from asking, “Is it really me you’re mad at?”

Sarah’s grip slackened on the parka. She sat without saying a word.

Chuck deemed it safe to sit up. “Whatever happened with Bryce, it’s not your fault,” he pointed out. “He’s his own person. He’ll face the consequences of his actions someday. I fully believe that. But he’s good at pretty much everything he’s ever done, so there’s no use beating yourself up because he kept this a secret.” Chuck straightened the parka. “He’s got skills. That’s why he’s Bond.”

“Except,” Sarah said, her voice thick, “Bond wasn’t a traitor.”

Chuck couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he just cleared his throat. “Why don’t, uh, why don’t you lie down, get some sleep? I’ll keep watch for awhile, make sure nobody disturbs you or anything.”

“I’m supposed to be protecting you, not the other way around.”

“And I promise that if we get attacked by bad guys, my girlish screams of terror will wake you up in plenty of time.” Chuck gave his most bolstering smile and kept it up until Sarah had curled up on the bench. Eventually, her shoulders loosened and her breathing slowed. Chuck watched until he was sure she was asleep before he turned his gaze out into the black beyond the train.

His mind churned with the questions he couldn’t voice. Why would Bryce do this? Was it for money? Ethics? For _him_? Would Bryce have done this, have stolen government secrets and stored them inside Chuck, just to ensure that Chuck made it out of the bunker? No, that wasn’t possible. It made even less sense than Bryce working for money. Chuck had had maybe two months left in that bunker until his contract was paid up in full and he could return to real life. There was no reason Bryce would ever commit treason for a measly two months.

Of course, there was no reason Bryce should ever commit treason anyway.

The train screamed again as they made a major turn. Sarah stirred, but didn’t wake.

And what about her? How on earth had Bryce managed to keep such a secret from Sarah? It would take both a large amount of knowledge and willpower. And resources. Lots and lots of resources. Among them, Chuck knew, was himself because he’d given Bryce those heat-scans of DC areas. The government would definitely look into that when he returned to Langley. Before they threw him in another underground bunker. Thanks, Bryce.

Maybe Bryce had done the noble thing by keeping Sarah in the dark, giving her plausible deniability. Or maybe he just didn’t want to leave a loose end that would have had to been tied up later. After all, three people could keep a secret—if two were dead.

It made Chuck sick to think these things about his best friend. What had Bryce been thinking? What on earth had been going through that perfectly coiffed head when he’d stormed government property and blown up the Intersect database? Had he given a single thought to the consequences for his partner and his unwitting partner-in-crime? 

Again, the train track curved and the train responded by letting out a screech. Again, Sarah shifted. She looked perilously close to falling off the bench, but nudging her back to safety would only wake her. Chuck just decided to keep an eye out for her.

Of course, that was an avenue he still needed to explore. What did he really know about Sarah Walker? Would she keep her word? Was she really looking out for him? Or was she pulling him along by the nose that people could arrest him the second he set foot on American soil? Was he just (and this made him sweat just thinking about it) a vessel for the Intersect, to be delivered by Bryce and Sarah straight to the enemy? It occurred to him for the millionth time since the train ride had started that he was putting his life in the hands of a woman he barely knew. They’d shared one (very disgusting) drink, had spoken via satellite phone (usually in high-octane situations when Bryce and Sarah needed a back-up plan to get them out of the frying pan), and had only one real thing in common.

Bryce Larkin, rogue agent.

Chuck stared into the blackness and tried not to freak out.

**27 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**YAROSLAVSKY TERMINAL, MOSCOW**   
**05:52 YEKT**

At Moscow, they moved to the corridor outside their train cabin and squeezed by other passengers, ducking high train partitions when necessary. With every new person they passed, Chuck felt the walls close in a little bit. His throat dried up after a minute, became the Gobi desert the next. He kept his gaze forward, focusing on just getting off of the train…where it would no longer be enclosed, where there would be even more people, all waiting, all cramming into spaces where there were far too many people, far too much color, far too much noise—

“Chuck?” A hand on his arm made his vision stop tunneling. Chuck blinked and twisted to look at Sarah, who was right behind him. “You okay?”

“What? Oh—yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. I’m good.” Chuck gulped.

But Sarah narrowed her eyes. “You’re covered in sweat.”

“It’s okay, I’m fine. Parka’s a little warm.”

“Are you sure?”

Chuck assured her that he was and turned around. He took a deep breath.

Outside, it grew worse. There was no longer a cover protecting him from the great open sky. He stepped out into the cold September morning and immediately felt his hands begin to shake. Though he wanted nothing more than to scramble back onto the train, to return to that horribly uncomfortable bench, he forced himself to step down onto the platform. No way was he going to chicken out in front of Sarah just because of a little government-induced agoraphobia.

She didn’t say anything, but she did take his arm and wrap her own through it. “Don’t want to lose you. We’ve got awhile before the next train leaves.”

“Next train?” Chuck managed to ask in a normal voice.

“Yes, we’ll take the Sapsan up to St. Petersburg. C’mon. I could really use a coffee.” She maneuvered him forward, which was probably a good thing. At the sight of the crowds—admittedly thin, as it was early morning—milling about, everything inside Chuck had frozen solid. He walked a bit creakily beside her, the noise and the fury making him sweat underneath the parka.

By the time they reached the end of the platform, he was literally praying under his breath, wishing that it would all go away.

“Still with me?” Sarah asked.

Chuck just nodded, unsure that normal speech was possible. The edges of his vision were beginning to compact like the trash room on the Death Star.

“Well, good. We’ll check the boards to find our train, and then we’ll get that coffee and find our berth on the train. It’ll be a piece of cake, right?”

Chuck could feel the sweat sliding, greasy and unwelcome, between his shoulder blades. By the time they’d found the train, with hot, bitter coffee in hand, he was soaked. He collapsed on his seat and began to take deep, gulping breaths. Thankfully, they were alone in the cabin so far, though he figured that wouldn’t last long.

“Going to make it?” She was smiling a little as she asked.

Instead of manning up, as his old instructors would have ordered, Chuck put his head in his hands. “Too many people,” he said. His hands came away wet; he was drenched. “Is there, ah, a bathroom anywhere, do you think?”

“Just down the corridor,” Sarah said. “Do you need me to go with you?”

Chuck shook his head and hurried away. In the bathroom, he locked the door and pulled off all of his gear, using water to slap most of the sweat away. He made a point of rewrapping his padding and pulling on his parka, though the train atmosphere was far too warm for such cold weather clothing. But removing the gear was like unstrapping a shield, and with everything happening around him…he needed the little bit of sanity he had left.

He avoided meeting the eyes of the tired and rumpled man in the mirror the whole time. There was always too much disappointment in that face.

Sarah was reading a Russian newspaper when he returned. “Feeling better?”

“Much. I’m sorry I freaked out on you—”

“You held it together better than I ever would have if I’d been stuck with limited interaction for three years.”

“Five.”

Sarah lowered the paper to stare at him. “They had you there for _five_ years? You told me you’d only been there a year when Bryce and I came to see you.”

Chuck shook his head slowly. “They had me somewhere else before that.”

“Where?”

“I’m not sure. They knocked me out to transport me there and away.” The fact that he’d been kept in a mysterious location for two years still sat in the back of his mind like a lump of lead that would never dislodge itself. At least in the Siberian Hellhole, he’d had internet connection and access to satellites.

Across from him, Sarah suddenly leaned forward and put a hand on his knee. She met his eyes. “I’m going to look out for you, Chuck. Nobody’s going to put you in a bunker again.”

“Why?” Chuck asked before he could think about stopping himself. “Why are you doing this? This is the next thing to treason.”

It took a long time for Sarah to answer. “Because I don’t think Bryce is a traitor,” she finally admitted. “And even if he is, I owe him my life. I owe him to look out for his best friend. And I owe you, too. You’ve saved my life a couple of times.”

Chuck waved a hand, though he had a hard time shrugging off such sincerity. “All I did was call for a little backup or hide a satellite feed a couple of times—”

“Chuck. Just accept my gratitude.” Sarah kept her gaze focused on his until he relented and nodded. “I’m not going to let the government put you away like that again. You have rights.”

“How on earth could you ever hope to stop them?” Chuck demanded, trying to keep the despair out of his voice and failing. “Sarah, they’re the government of the United Freaking States of America. This is bigger than either of us. I appreciate the thought, but maybe I should just give up now.”

“Trust me, Chuck. I’ll get us through this.”

Chuck opened his mouth to reply to that, but the door to their cabin opened and two men in suits, newspapers tucked under their arms, joined them. Sarah hurriedly switched over so that she was sitting next to Chuck. She bumped him with her shoulder and smiled, but he didn’t smile back. Instead, he just leaned his head back against the seat and stared at the ceiling.

**27 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**PULKOVO AIRPORT**   
**11:47 YEKT**

In St. Petersburg, they took a taxi. It wasn’t as much of an adventure as it could have been—Chuck managed to shore himself up for the trip into the crowds so that he held up somewhat better this time. His hands twitched, but he found that if he stared forward and didn’t look around, it could become a game of one foot in front of the next and so on. By the time Sarah helped him into the taxi, he’d begun to count his footsteps. Since Sarah had quite the mastery on the Russian language; she directed the taxi driver to their desired entrance at the airport with ease.

“What are you going to do about passports?” Chuck asked under his breath. He didn’t have to speak loudly, crammed as they were into the taxi cab.

“I’ve got it covered.”

“Were you by any chance a boy scout yourself?”

“No.” Sarah leaned closer to give the driver directions, guiding the taxi not to the terminal but to the private section. She pulled Chuck out into the September cold, heading for the on-tarmac transport.

“Um, Sarah, hate to point this out, but the terminals are that way—”

“We’re not flying commercial.” Sarah climbed into the driver’s seat and popped out a panel just below the steering wheel. She began to fiddle with wires, completely businesslike.

“Are we hijacking this?” Chuck gaped. “Wait, we’re not hijacking a _plane_ , are we?”

“No.” Sarah twitched one last wire and the engine purred to life. “I just don’t want to walk all the way to the hangar. C’mon, get in and hold on.”

Chuck obeyed, grabbing onto the door and praying for what felt like the fifteenth time of the day. Sarah had obviously been Dale Earnhart in another life. They careened into a large hangar bay less than five minutes later. On shaky legs, Chuck climbed from the cart. 

Sarah tossed him a cloth. “Fingerprints” was all she said, and belatedly, Chuck realized that she wanted him to wipe down the door. He hurried to catch up when she strode away.

The hanger, a huge, yawning building that caught every draft from outside and intensified it, spread out all around them. Planes rose like gods and titans from the smooth concrete, all shapes and sizes. They passed luxury liner jets and crop dusters alike. Chuck stared at a few as they passed, wondering just how on earth they’d managed to walk into such a building so easily. Shouldn’t these planes be better guarded?

“So you, um, hired a pilot?”

Sarah didn’t answer—probably because she’d spotted the only other person in the hangar. Chuck blinked when a real smile blossomed over her face and she ran over to hug a tall, swarthy man. What she said, Chuck had no idea, but he was pretty sure it was French. He picked up her knapsack from where she’d dropped it and shouldered the burden himself. As he did so, he got his first good look at Sarah’s friend.

The flash, of course, all but bitch-slapped him.

Jean-Claude Gestreaux, Belgian national, DOB 10 January, 1972. 

Four known priors, suspected member of Templars, on retainer for CIA and Interpol, specialty IDENTITY FRAUD.

Chuck blinked off the micro-migraine.

“Bonjour,” he attempted, using up the only French he knew that wasn’t from _Lady_ _Marmalade_.

“Oh, right. Chuck, this is Jean-Claude, Jean-Claude, this is—”

“Peter Rogers.” Jean-Claude’s white teeth flashed against his dark skin as he shook Chuck’s hand. “It’s an honor to meet you, Pete.”

Chuck wondered why the Intersect had neglected to mention that Jean-Claude Gestreaux was a few Belgian chocolates short of a full sampler box.

But Jean-Claude hadn’t finished. He held out an envelope to Chuck. “Your documents.”

“What?” Confused, Chuck slit open the envelope and watched a driver’s license and passport tumble onto his palm. A social security card fluttered to the floor. As he knelt to retrieve it, he opened the passport. That was his picture, certainly, but the name was indeed Peter Rogers. “What?” he asked again.

“Jean-Claude’s what we call a grease-man,” Sarah explained. “He’s the one that arranged airport security to let us in. The best in the business, right here.”

Jean-Claude chuckled and waved off the compliment. “Always glad to help my favorite face. Don’t forget about your own papers.” He handed Sarah an identical envelope. 

She raised her eyebrow at the passport. “Diana Rogers?”

“Clever, isn’t it?” Jean-Claude lapsed back into French. From the way the Belgian glanced Chuck’s way often and the way Sarah avoided looking at him completely, Chuck knew they were talking about him. He didn’t care. He was too busy studying his new documents. DOB for Peter Rogers—October fifteenth, which meant that he was still a Libra. And, hey, he could possibly celebrate his birthday with other people present this time.

“Chuck?” Sarah touched his arm. “We’d better move out.”

“What? Oh, oh, sure. Right.” Chuck collected himself and shook Jean-Claude’s hand. “Thanks for the new identity. I appreciate the name.”

“No problem. Sarah—oh, my apologies. Diana. I shall be in touch.”

“I’m sure.”

“Look for my bill.” And Jean-Claude wandered away, whistling. 

Sarah took her bag back and shouldered it. “Our ride’s this way. If I know Jean-Claude at all, it’ll be cleared and ready to go.” She led Chuck to a bright-yellow Cessna parked just off the main strip through the hangar bay. “Ta-da.”

“This is really our ride?” Chuck held up a hand to block some of the brightness.

“Yep. I call her the Sting.”

“Like the thing a bee does, or the movie?”

It turned out there was quite a bit of work to be done on a plane before it could take off. Sarah ran down a checklist while Chuck climbed up into the cockpit and stowed their bags. It almost comforted him to be in such an enclosed space after all the openness of Moscow and St. Petersburg. He relaxed into his seat while Sarah communicated with the tower.

“All right,” she said, adjusting her headset. “We’re clear to go.”

“Just like that?”

“I’m in black ops. I know how to travel expediently when I need to. Hold these.” She handed over her documents. “Whatever you do, don’t touch anything.” 

Since the sheer amount of toggles and switches and gauges was throwing him for a loop, Chuck just nodded. He didn’t particularly feel like dying in a horrendous plane crash after everything that had happened in the past forty-eight hours. He chose to focus on the passports to distract himself. “So, same last name, huh?”

“Yeah.” Sarah toggled a switch. “Same last name.”

“What’s our, uh, cover? Rocking a little brother-sister identity action?”

“More like husband-wife, since we look nothing alike. You’re in software, your product is selling well. I’m your extreme sports-loving wife that you met six years ago when mutual friends introduced us.”

“Wow, that’s detailed. How come you’re the extreme sports lover in this situation?”

“Because I’m flying the plane. We left the little ones with Uncle Bryce while you had to be in St. Petersburg to meet with clients. And now we’re taking a second honeymoon by exploring eastern Europe.” While she spoke, Sarah geared up the plane so that the engine purred to life. She began to drive out of the hangar, but she spared Chuck a brief smile. “I’ve always wanted to, and Pete can’t say no to Diana.”

“Can’t he now? Good to know.”

Chuck fell silent as Sarah taxied the plane to the runway, contacting the tower occasionally. Though she seemed confident as she guided the plane along, doubt proved stronger than his resolve. “So, um, uh, how good a pilot are you? What are we talking about here? Every once in a while, recreational type flyer or more hardcore stuff? Like, look out, MIG, while I flip over, flip you the bird, and maybe get a Polaroid just to treasure the memories?”

Sarah smiled at the control panel. “Relax. I’m a great pilot.” She held up a hand to let him know she was getting a message from the tower, and replied back in something that sounded like code, more numbers than words. “Ready for take-off, Chuck?”

“Sure,” he managed, and tried not to show that he was holding for dear life.

And just like that, they were cleared to leave Russia.


	3. Wild Blue Yonder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving. — _John Dewey_

**27 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**MIDAIR BEARING EAST FROM ST. PETERSBURG**   
**14:31 GET**

It wasn’t so bad, flying. The initial lift-off was even thrilling, certainly different from being stuck inside of a 747 and watching through a tiny window. In the Cessna, they were more like a fly batted upwards than the huge, ugly birds of prey that Jumbo Jets resembled to him. He might, Chuck acknowledged with the open-eyed pragmatism his one-therapist would have celebrated, have had trouble with the tiny plane pre-Serbia. But claustrophobia was apparently a thing of the past, even if he was hyper-aware of the woman to his left for the whole trip, the way she looked and smelled, and now, because the cockpit was small enough that their thighs brushed, how she felt. He tried to focus past that, and not only the sky, but the way she handled the controls. Confidently. Easily. Okay, so the woman was more than just a great pilot. She could fight, throw a knife better than anybody he’d seen, fly, shoot, be a secret agent, and rescue geeks in distress.

“I’m rapidly changing my mind about this whole Bond thing,” Chuck admitted when it looked like they’d reached some sort of cruising altitude and the heavy lifting was done. “I’m starting to think you’re way cooler than Bond.”

Sarah grinned. “I had Jean-Claude pick some clothes up for you—they’re in the back. I told him you were tall, but I don’t know exactly how well they’ll fit.”

“Fantastic.” Chuck studied the cabin, just a tiny room with four seats, to figure out how best to go about this. In such a cramped space, it was an adventure, but he managed to squeeze past Sarah without causing her to crash the plane. Jean-Claude had apparently packed a duffel bag with several options—jeans, sweaters, a few T-shirts in the mix. Yuppie brands, mostly, Chuck saw. After assuring himself that Sarah wasn’t peeking, Chuck began the arduous process of stripping out of his Siberian gear.

He took a deep breath, reminded himself that he was in a plane several thousand feet above the ground, and that Sarah had sworn she would protect him. If she was going to, he would need to trust her. First went the heavy parka, peeled off because it stuck to the homemade padding beneath, padding that had become a bit ripe due to all of the flop sweat. Chuck took his time unwinding this, unraveling it slowly, layer by layer, so that it revealed an old gray T-shirt. After checking again to make sure Sarah still had her eyes forward, he peeled out of this and gagged. It had been awhile since the improvised sponge bath on the train in Moscow. He quickly yanked off the thermal undershirt and pawed through his parka pockets for deodorant. It didn’t entirely kill the smell, but it helped.

“I think we may need to toss my old gear out the window,” he called to Sarah as he pulled a dark red sweater, the only thing that looked like it might fit, from the duffel.

“We’ll burn it when we get to Athens,” she promised without looking back.

Most of the clothing in the bag was simply huge. Apparently, Jean-Claude had been preparing for somebody much larger. The jeans bagged on Chuck, but at least there was a belt. He rooted out a pair of socks.

“There’s shoes, too,” Sarah called over the engine noise.

Chuck unearthed them and stared for a full minute before he burst out laughing.

“What? What is it?” Sarah craned to get a good look, panic evident.

“Your friend has a sense of humor.” Chuck waggled a shoe at her. “He gave me chucks. Black ones. What is it?”

Sarah, perhaps realizing that she’d been staring, jolted. “Nothing.”

“You’re staring.” Chuck began donning the shoes.

“No I wasn’t.”

“Oh, come on. You totally were.”

Even sitting diagonally behind her, he could see the smile start to curl up at the corner of her mouth. “I wasn’t staring. Precisely. I’ve just—I’ve never seen you sans Eskimo couture.”

Chuck automatically glanced down. “Oh. Oh, right. Yeah, I guess it’s been a few years since I’ve worn anything else.” He ran a hand down the front of the sweater. “It’s soft. Heh.”

“You’re thinner than I expected.” Sarah kept her eyes on the open sky out the window.

Chuck, mid-clamber into the passenger seat, grinned. “Admiring my manly physique, were we?”

“You’re thinner than I expected. That’s all.”

“Oh-ho-ho,” Chuck said, laughing. “Well, get a good look. The gun show will probably have to don the parka again soon.” He made a show of flexing his biceps at her.

“No time.” Sarah pulled off her headset. “I’ve got to get changed.”

When she stared to rise, Chuck grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?”

“I said I have to get changed.” 

“No, no, no, you have to fly the plane. I can’t fly this thing, I never made it to the flight segment of spy training, and I’m really, really not qualified for this—”

“Chuck. Relax.” Sarah actually grabbed the sides of his face to ensure that he looked at her. “I put it on autopilot while you were changing. Keep an eye out, make sure nothing’s coming, okay? It’ll just take me a minute.”

She brushed a hand over his hair as she climbed past him.

He didn’t blink. For a full five minutes, his eyes remained wide open, always darting, seeking, searching every corner of the sky—a cloudless, pristine, autumnal sky—for any possible danger. Other airplanes. Geese. Meteorites, Superman, dragons, anything that could possibly signal an oncoming apocalypse or death. Even when his eyes burned and began to itch, he didn’t blink.

Nor did he look behind him, even though the rustling sounded…interesting.

An eternity later, Sarah climbed back up. She’d shucked off the unobtrusive sweater and dark pants for a much sportier outfit. “Extreme sports loving wife, remember,” she said at his wordless look.

To cover his gaffe, Chuck forced a laugh. “You’re thinner than I expected,” he mimicked.

She punched his shoulder. “Shut up.”

“So what now?” Chuck asked, rubbing his aching eyes. “We fly all the way back to the States? Cos I gotta tell you, I’m a little nervous at the thought.”

“No. The trick is to keep moving, to keep changing modes of transportation and identities as often as we can. Since I only had time to arrange Jean-Claude and a couple of things, we’ll be flying mostly under the radar—”

“Pun intended?” Chuck wondered.

“And we’ll stay Pete and Diana until we reach Athens.”

“We’re going to Athens?”

“Eventually. I’ve got a contact there that can help us.” Sarah slanted a sideways look at Chuck. “Bryce never knew about him. He’s an…”

“Ex?” Chuck guessed.

“Yeah.”

“So how come Bryce doesn’t know about him?” 

Sarah moved a shoulder. “Bryce and I didn’t tell each other everything. Obviously.”

The sting of Bryce’s betrayal hit all over again. Chuck cleared his throat, wanted to hunch his shoulders. Because he’d already shown off his un-manliness enough for a day, though, he just shook his head. “Sorry, didn’t mean to bring it up.”

“It’s okay.”

Chuck glanced at the control panel, recognizing a few gauges from video games. “How much gas does this thing hold, anyway? And how far can we go on one tank of gas?”

“Two tanks,” Sarah corrected. “And we’re going about four hundred miles. We’ll be crash-landing in about two hours.”

“Um, what?” Chuck twisted in his seat, positive that he had misheard. “You said what now?” 

“You trust me, right?”

He didn’t really have a choice now that he’d stepped from the bunker and into the wilderness with her. But there was, his brain piped in from the rational corner, a long way between trust and crash-landing planes. He began to hyperventilate.

Sarah just smacked him between the shoulder blades with the flat of her hand. “We’re not actually going to crash, Chuck.”

“Then why put it like that?” His breathing slowed, but only a little. It was hard to get past the deluge of planes-blowing-up images flashing through his head. He wondered, briefly, if any were from the Intersect, but they all seemed to be coming from his imagination. Fantastic.

“Because it’s more fun. Now, you might want to catch a nap because once we land, we’ll need to move fast.”

He had no idea why she thought he might be capable of sleeping in the wake of the announcement that they would soon be crash-landing. “Better idea. Why don’t you teach me how to fly instead?”

“So you can grab the controls away from me when you get scared?” Sarah gave him a sardonic “not happening” look.

Chuck held up both hands, innocently. “I won’t. I swear. There’s just no way I’m going to be able to sleep right now.”

“Really? You look exhausted.”

Chuck shrugged. “I’m trying to bring it back into style. I promise I’m a quick learner.”

After a long moment, Sarah shrugged. “I guess it can’t hurt.” She began pointing at the various dials and gauges, explaining the purpose of each. Chuck paid close attention, storing as much away mentally as he could—

He felt his eyelids begin to droop after twenty minutes.

After thirty, he was sound asleep.

**27 SEPTEMBER, 2007**   
**10 KM NORTH OF RADOMSKO, POLAND**   
**18:45 CEST**

“Crash-landing” the plane meant landing on a dirt road adjoining a field. It was horribly anticlimactic. In fact, the most exciting part was that Sarah made him get out while the engine was still running, and hurry to open a set of barn doors so that she could taxi the plane inside. Dusk was approaching by this point, tinting the sky with melting pinks and purples around the edges. Chuck took a minute to admire it before he turned and scrambled back into the darkness of the barn. In the cockpit, Sarah pulled off her headphones and shut everything down, her movements considerably slower than they’d been earlier. It was when she alit—and stumbled upon landing—that Chuck raised both eyebrows.

“You doing okay?”

“I’m fine.” The words were bit off.

Chuck raised both hands defensively. “Sorry. Just making sure.”

The wounded look on his face made Sarah sigh. “I’ve been traveling for over forty-eight hours on half an hour of sleep,” she admitted. “I’m a little tired.”

Chuck goggled at her. “You mean I let you fly a plane when you haven’t slept at all? Why didn’t you sleep on the train?!”

“Let me?” Sarah crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows right back. 

It occurred to him that bossing around an armed and tired woman had its drawbacks. “I didn’t mean it like that. But if you keep going like this, you’re going to collapse or die, and trust me, you’re no use to either of us if you’re dead.”

“Use?” Her voice had gone soft, dangerously so.

“Again, not what I mean.” Chuck held out both hands—a futile peacekeeping gesture. “I appreciate what you’re doing, saving me like this and staying in my corner. Helping out. But I can’t have it on my conscience that you’re pushing yourself this hard.”

“Ever think maybe that’s up to me?”

“Completely, but you’re going on next to no sleep over forty-eight hours, and I’m worried you’re not thinking rationally.” Chuck put a note of conviction in his voice. “Is six hours going to make that much of a difference?”

“I told you, we have to move quickly—”

“And how’s that going to work when you pass out from exhaustion?” Chuck mirrored her stance perfectly. “I don’t see any other form of transportation here, so we’re clearly walking. I can carry you maybe…” Not far at all. He’d only had to carry a woman a couple of times—and it had been Jill, who was considerably shorter than Sarah. And even then, only for a few feet at most. “Seriously. Just six hours. You can see if the plane seats recline—”

“They don’t.”

“Or we can just sleep up in the hayloft, out of sight, giving us plenty of time to get away. We can rappel down the side of the barn or something if we hear somebody coming.”

With every word, Chuck could see the crack in Sarah’s resolve deepening. So he kept talking—it was an old trick, he knew, but it worked. “We’ll move faster if we’re refreshed—and fed. I haven’t eaten since the Sapsan and, you know us growing boys, we need our food. So we rest, eat, and set out. It’ll be full dark by then. I assume you know where we’re going, so….”

“I do,” Sarah admitted slowly. She glanced at the hayloft. Chuck wondered if she knew that she was beginning to sway a little in the breeze. When she looked back at him, the stony mask was back in place. “Four.”

“Four? What?”

“Four hours to sleep, and then we move out. The plane took a little less time than I anticipated—the headwinds weren’t as strong as I thought they might have been. We’ll only be losing about two hours.”

“And we’ll make those up,” Chuck said quickly, relief nearly making him dizzy. “You get the rope and the food or whatever, and I’ll set up a perimeter.”

Sarah stopped. “You’ll do what now?”

“I attended a little bit of spy training before they locked me away. Enough to know how to set up a perimeter.” Chuck opened the passenger door of the plane and snatched his parka. He flipped it inside out, digging through the pockets and unearthing three objects the size of credit cards.

“What’re those?”

“Sensors. Two to set the perimeter, and one to serve as the receiver for the alert.” Holding two of the flat navy blue sensors between his teeth like a debit card, Chuck fiddled with the third, sliding thin compartments away so that it formed a rudimentary speaker. “I spent my free time modifying circuitry in the bunker. I’ll go set these up inside the door—lucky there’s only one entrance to this place, isn’t it?”

“Kind of why I picked it,” Sarah muttered under her breath, though Chuck heard her perfectly.

Once his sensors had been set up on a level surface so that the lasers would rebound back and forth, providing an intangible trip wire, Chuck shut the barn door, plunging the entire place into gloom. “Sarah?”

“Up here!” came the call from the hayloft.

It was an interesting education in creating a fear of heights to climb the rickety ladder, but Chuck managed. The hayloft was apparently where the barn’s owner stored not only ancient, musty bales of hay, but broken down machinery. Given the time, Chuck would have liked to poke around through some of it, but the exhaustion was too prevalent. Because of the machinery, there was only a limited space where he and Sarah could hole up. He dropped onto the floor next to her, taking the sandwich Sarah held out and biting in without tasting it.

“Here,” he said, tossing Sarah the receiver. “You’re probably better off with that.”

“Thanks.” She clipped it to her vest. “Handy.”

Chuck, too busy inhaling a sandwich to talk, gave a modest shrug. With his free hand, he began yanking out handfuls of hay—but Sarah grabbed his arm, stopping him.

“We’re going to have to rough it. No making it look like two people crashed up here. Here.” She tossed his parka into his lap. “You can use that as a pillow.”

Chuck finished off the sandwich. “Gotcha. What’re you going to use?”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve slept on a barn floor, Chuck.” Sarah, her own sandwich long gone, proved it by lying down on the spot. “I just set my watch, so—four hours.”

“Good-night, then.” Chuck took a little longer to lie down, stretching out on his stomach. Everything ached—his butt, his bones, his muscles, his face, his whole head. It was nothing but relief he felt at finally getting to lie on a flat, unmoving surface. He could even ignore the hot blonde woman sleeping a little over a foot away.

Almost.


	4. Don't Mess with Mrs. Rogers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another—too often ending in the loss of both. — _Tryon Edwards_

**28 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**20 KM FROM ATHENS, GREECE**   
**17:17 BST**

By Chuck’s estimation, they’d used every type of travel possible—train, taxi, plane, the good old sneaker express, car, and finally, boat. They’d chartered a ferry from Thessaloniki, and he could count the miles solely by how tense Sarah grew, stuck on a boat with no chance of escape. He traded his time watching the stunning blue waters of the sea churning below the ferry for watching Sarah scan the skies, expecting perhaps a helicopter or a team of Navy SEALs to come bursting onto the ferry. That was, of course, when he himself wasn’t watching the other passengers suspiciously. It was a limited number on the ferry deck, but far, far more than he was used to. So he kept his guard up. And distracted himself by tweaking the tail of his tiger traveling buddy.

“I’m just wondering, but are we ever going to talk about Poland?” he drawled when Sarah had checked the sky for the fifteenth time that hour.

She jolted in her seat, but recovered quickly. “Talk about what?” At his know-it-all smirk, she rolled her eyes. “For the last time, I was using you for body heat. I was not snuggling.”

“Cuddling. Cuddling was the word I used.”

“Whatever.” Sarah adjusted her Jackie O sunglasses and stared forward, at the passing sea. “I never should have caved and agreed to a rest stop. If I’d known it would lead to this, I would have just made you keep marching, Pete.”

Chuck raised his eyebrows at the cover name. “What’s a little cuddling between friends?”

She hit him in the shoulder. She’d done it before, but this was the first time with any power behind it. Though he’d likely have bruises, Chuck had to fight a smile. He didn’t admit that it had been nice to wake up wrapped around somebody else, even though four hours was an insane amount of sleep after everything they’d been through. 

“Who’s to say,” Sarah said, “you weren’t the one that started it?”

“I was exactly where I’d fallen asleep. You were the one half on top of me,” Chuck pointed out, and watched the faintest pink tinge spread over his traveling partner’s cheeks.

Interesting.

Because he wasn’t a complete jerk, he decided to change the subject. “Wouldn’t it have just been faster to take the train?”

“They’ll be monitoring all of the trains in the area,” Sarah said. “Maybe not vigilantly since we threw your watch on the eastbound train before we left Siberia. But we can’t risk them getting lucky.”

“Hence the weird travel pattern,” Chuck finished. It had taken him awhile to realize that they’d landed in southern Poland. Upon waking—and untangling themselves—they’d grabbed sleek travel bags from the plane and had covered ten kilometers at a trot. Sarah had set the pace. Chuck had merely done everything he possibly could to keep up, but after so long living in an enclosed space, he wasn’t used to walking great distances, much less almost jogging them. 

Nine hours in a small car hadn’t made things any better. Though Sarah had let him split the driving with her.

They’d spent the day playing tourist, of all things. Sarah had ditched the car, they’d stowed the bags at a train station, and had gone all over Thessaloniki. If he hadn’t been battling another serious case of agoraphobia, he might have had a blast. Sarah kept insisting they pose for couple-type photos with the camera she’d brought—Chuck was positive that when they reviewed the pictures later, he would be covered in sweat in every single one. 

The ferry had left in the wee hours of dawn, giving them time to find a quiet, out of the way bar to eat and rest. Though Sarah had kept a cheerful façade going all throughout the seafood smorgasbord, Chuck had just felt like melting into his seat and sleeping for about fourteen hours straight.

Of course, sleeping on the ferry got interesting. They hadn’t booked any berths, so they’d slept sitting up—and since Sarah really wanted to sell the married cover, she’d used Chuck’s shoulder as a pillow. He hadn’t gotten much sleep.

The voice over the intercom gabbled at them, making Sarah glance up. “Twenty minutes,” she announced.

“And then we’re in Athens?”

“And then we’re in Athens.”

“Fantastic.” Chuck fiddled with his sunglasses and sighed. “We’ll go meet your ex—”

“My cousin,” Sarah warned and added, under her breath, “ _Pete_.”

Oh right. Their cover was a married couple and Chuck figured Peter Rogers probably wouldn’t want to spend time with any of his wife’s exes.

“We’ll go meet your cousin,” he finished. “Silly me, I’ve forgotten his name.”

“And yours, too,” Sarah apparently couldn’t resist adding.

When they disembarked, the cab took them to a bungalow not too far from the coastline. “Nice place—is he just not at home or something?”

“No, this is where we’re staying tonight.” Finally out of sight of the public, Sarah rolled her shoulders to release the kinks. She tossed her bag onto the bed—the only bed, Chuck noted—and immediately began to root around. Looking for bugs, Chuck realized. “What’s going to happen is that I’ll go see Randy, and you’ll stay here and not set foot outside. Do you understand me? I want you to stay in here. Take a shower, go to bed. And whatever you do, do _not_ go outside.” She turned and drilled a finger into his chest. “I mean that, Chuck. I don’t care if the four horsemen of the apocalypse want you to come out and play strip poker with them and the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, you are to stay. In. Here. Preferably away from the windows.”

The four horsemen of the apocalypse and the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders? Now there was something to have very erotic nightmares about. Chuck frowned. “Why can’t I go with you?”

“Because what’s in your head is a valuable piece of intelligence to the United States government and Randy’s…not exactly kosher.”

Something about her tone, and the way her eyes cut to the right, made Chuck grab her wrist before she could leave. “I really think I should go with you.”

She stared at his hand as if baffled. “Chuck, how many ways do you know to kill a man?”

Well, that was a weird question. “Um…shoot him? Shove him off a bridge?”

Sarah leaned in and whispered exactly how many ways she knew to send a man shuffling from his mortal coil. Chuck decided not to bring up the hayloft cuddling again. Ever.

“Got it,” he said, swallowing audibly and taking a micro-step back. “I’ll just stay in here tonight, learn some Greek from ‘Happy Days’ marathons or something. Tell Randy I say hi.”

But before she left, Sarah handed him a piece of paper. “If I don’t come back, call that number and ask for Clark. Just tell him I’m vouching for you, and he’ll get you to DC.”

Chuck scanned the paper, grateful it didn’t cause a flash (that had been a problem during their tourism jaunts—apparently, there was intelligence buried in ancient Greek ruins), and stuffed it in his pocket. “Will do. Any idea what time you’ll be back?”

“Late. Don’t wait up, _honey_.”

“Yes, _dear_ ,” Chuck replied in exactly the same tone. Because it was polite, he escorted Sarah to the door, but stood where he wouldn’t be seen by anybody outside. Through a slit in the window blinds, he watched her amble away.

His first priority was a shower. The last time he’d had anything approaching the real thing had been an improvised sponge bath on the Russian train. He stripped out of the sweater and jeans he’d been wearing since the plane and, shedding clothes, hurried to the bathroom to wash away the reek. It was heaven, he decided, not to freeze to death right before and after his shower.

So heavenly that, assured Sarah wouldn’t be back for awhile, he felt comfortable lounging around in nothing but a towel, flipping through the channels on the television.

Greek. Greek. Possibly Italian. That sounded like French. Greek. Spanish. English. Gre—Chuck flipped back to the English-speaking station and set the remote aside. BBC news broadcast. It had been so long since he had actually watched a broadcast on the television rather than streaming from the internet. It didn’t matter that his connection in the bunker had been strangely fantastic. There was just something to watching TV on an actual TV set, even if it was the crappy 13-incher that this bungalow provided.

He absorbed details, cursing when a leader’s name activated some spark within the Intersect and caused a mini-migraine. Flashes, he’d decided to call them, as they were great flashes of insight. Since the Intersect had quite a bit of dirt on most of the world leaders, watching the news was like receiving his own dossier of behind-the-scenes politics.

He rubbed his forehead to clear some of the lingering muzziness from the flashes. “Wonderful. Is it going to be like that for the rest of my life? Geez.” Rising, he decided it was probably time to don boxers and maybe find something to eat, as his stomach had begun making its presence known—and loudly.

He downed half of the contents of the refrigerator, eating whole chunks of Feta and olive bread with his fingers, eating everything cold because he was too hungry to bother with cooking. When his frugal side alerted him that he should save something, should the next shipment of food and Tang not come…

He listened, though he knew, he _knew,_ that he had fled the bunker for good. But he wasn’t alone anymore, he had somebody else to think about. Sarah might be hungry later. 

Old habit made him tidy up the place before he turned off the TV and crawled into bed. They hadn’t brought any books, not even the one comic book he had read through thousands of times in the bunker, so his normal pre-sleep activities were out of the question. Instead, he pawed through his parka, glancing about to make sure that he was truly alone. He had no idea if Sarah had the bungalow bugged, but he’d have to risk it. His fingers found the seam and ripped with long practice. He’d have to sew it back up later, but that hardly mattered.

Two photographs fell away into his hand. They were crumpled, covered with spidery white lines of use, discolored due to sweat. But they were all he had. Indulging himself, he set them on the nightstand and, with those photographs watching over him, fell asleep.

**29 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**ATHENS, GREECE**   
**06:17 BST**

He woke, aware of two things.

The first, more pressingly (literally), was that he once again wasn’t alone. Somehow, Sarah had managed to slip inside without waking him. It showed quite a bit of skill on her part, for years in the bunker had made him paranoid to the point where he’d set up the sensors across the door the night before during one of his waking spells. He’d set the sensors at knee height—apparently she’d not only spotted them, but had jumped over and had landed soundlessly enough not to wake him. Or she’d come in through the window.

She’d also managed to climb into bed and true, she wasn’t cuddled up against him like in the hayloft, but he could definitely feel the way the mattress pulled, adjusting to her body weight behind him. It mortified him somewhat that a beautiful woman had climbed into bed with him and he’d slept through it. Even if she was completely off limits. There were just some things a guy should be awake to appreciate.

The second thing he noticed was that the pictures were no longer alone. They were still on the nightstand, two of them, cracked and bent. But there was a take-out menu lying flat beneath the pictures, a menu he was certain hadn’t been there the night before. Confused, Chuck reached out an arm and picked it up, careful not to move the mattress and wake Sarah.

Gio Pete’s. A family run restaurant, it appeared. The menu was peppered with bad English. Chuck’s eyebrows went up. Was this where Sarah had met up with the mysterious ex-boyfriend Randy? Except if it was, why would she put the menu underneath his pictures—and prop them up just like they’d been the night before? It made no sense.

Wait—what if it had been somebody else? Sarah had easily entered the bungalow without waking him. Why not somebody else? It couldn’t be a coincidence that Gio Pete’s shared the same name with Chuck’s current cover identity.

He flipped the menu over—and his eyes crossed.

A picture—two girls playing on the swing set in a sunlit park. 

Photocopied documents, black bars running across all of them. PROJECT OMAHA. Established May 2002, subjects tested. Proficiency in subliminal retention and pattern recognition. Subjects scored within 99.6 percentile of—

OMAHA moved to San Antonio, placed under the care of DR.—

Successful testing in Subjects Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot—

PROJECT REDACTED.

“Oh, God,” Chuck groaned, and pushed his head into the pillow. He dropped the menu.

Sarah jolted awake. In a blink, she was sitting up, knife in hand. “What is it? What? What?”

Chuck’s words were muffled by the pillow.

Perhaps now wasn’t the best time to learn that Sarah wasn’t really a morning person, but he did so anyway. She grabbed his shoulder and brutally yanked. “What is it?”

“Uncle! Uncle!”

His reaction seemed to make her relax. She sighed and put the knife away. “You’re not hurt, are you?” It was almost rhetorical.

“Just a flash.” Chuck massaged his sore shoulder, grateful it wasn’t the same one she’d pummeled on the ferry the day before. Well aware of the fact that he only wore boxers now, and that the sheets only covered him to the waist, he gingerly leaned over to pick up the menu and handed it over without a word. “Something on this incited a flash about Project Omaha. You ever heard of it?”

Sarah frowned as she took the menu. “No, but—” In another flash, she was out of the bed. “Where did you get this?”

“It was—it was on the nightstand.”

Sarah said a very bad word. Chuck’s eyes widened—in all the time they’d spent together, exhausted and on the lam, he’d never heard her curse. He threw aside the covers, ignoring his next-to-naked state. “What is it?”

“Get dressed.” Sarah was already hurrying to do the same.

“What?”

“Get dressed! The room’s been breached. We need to move!”

His movements clumsy, Chuck scrambled into the first outfit from his travel bag—a button-up shirt that fit him like a tent and his jeans from the day before, no matter what they smelled like. He stuffed things into the bag, while Sarah raced around the bungalow, restoring things to exactly how they’d been before arrival. She tossed him a cloth and this time Chuck understood without words that she wanted him to wipe the place down for fingerprints. 

Two minutes later, they fled the bungalow, bags in hand. Sarah had apparently arranged for some sort of transportation for the day, for she all but pushed Chuck into the passenger seat of a chunky sedan. They made it out of the parking lot without peeling out, but only just.

**29 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**THE ACROPOLIS**   
**08:12 BST**

“So we’re possibly being chased by spies, secret agents, maybe bad guys…and the first place we go is the Acropolis.” Chuck scratched the back of his head and stared at the ruins around them. He was once again covered in sweat, but he was used to that, as well as the feeling that the walls—the ancient, crumbling, open walls—were closing in around him like a tightening fist. It was early enough that a fair amount of tourists were abed, but there were enough people roaming the Acropolis to drive him beyond edgy.

“It’s public, it gives us an advantage,” Sarah murmured. She’d been on alert since they’d raced away from the bungalow. Only Chuck could tell, though. To everybody else, she just looked like half of a couple of tourists seeing the sights, holding the hand of her husband. Nobody else would realize she was holding Chuck’s hand to keep him from freaking out—and that she’d noticed everything about everybody and nothing about the beautiful ancient architecture all around them. “We’ll probably be able to see somebody coming.”

“Probably?” Chuck echoed, not reassured by that in the least. “Who do you think could have left that menu, Sarah?”

“Diana,” Sarah corrected under her breath.

Chuck gave her an impatient look.

“I have theories,” Sarah hedged.

“Any you’re willing to share?”

“Peter,” and Sarah deliberately laced her voice with a playful air, “we’re on vacation! We should be enjoying this—ooh, look, let’s go see the Erectheion!”

Chuck forced his cheer to match hers. “Anything you say, sweetheart.”

He heard her echo the last word under her breath in amusement, but let himself be pulled down the path to the Erectheion. For a little while, neither spoke. Chuck focused on walking or staring at the toes of his shoes. If he looked up, he noticed two things—the people, and the people. His stomach rumbled, but not from hunger. He was perpetually about two swallows from choking up the breakfast Sarah had practically shoved down his throat.

“You remember what we talked about,” Sarah said under her breath as they wandered on. “About if we get split up at any point today.”

Chuck shook his head, bewildered. “I still don’t understand. Why do you want me to go to an Air Force Base rather than wait somewhere for you to find me?”

Sarah checked to make sure nobody was nearby before she leaned in close. To anybody observing from a distance, it would only look like young lovers showing a bit too much PDA. “Because I might not be able to make it to a meet-up, and what you have in your head is a valuable piece of government property. Your protection isn’t worth the risk of waiting for a meet-up.”

A cold flash of insight made him understand. Might not be able to make it? “Sa—”

“ _Diana_.”

“Are you in more danger than me right now?” Chuck swallowed. “Like, they’ll shoot you on sight?”

Sarah looked away. “Just enjoy the architecture.”

“Answer the question.” Suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter that there were far too many people, or that the sky was too broad and expansive and open. That he was sweaty and shaking. Chuck kept his eyes on her face. “They think you’re rogue. They can’t kill me because I’ve got the only copy of the Intersect in my head, but you…they’ll see you as expendable.”

“I’m off the grid,” Sarah said. “My partner stole a valuable piece of government property, and two days later, I went off the grid with the only remaining copy. Right now, by all appearances, I’m guilty of high treason.”

Chuck stared at her for an eternity. “Okay.” He pushed past her.

But Sarah grabbed his arm, whirling him around. “Okay, what?”

“I’m going to the Air Force Base, I’m giving them the phrase you told me, and I’m turning myself in. And I’ll tell them you had nothing to do with it, and that you were innocent.” Perhaps it was the pictures he’d foolishly stuffed in his pocket instead of hiding them like he always did, perhaps it was the fact that everybody in the area had vanished, leaving nobody but him and Sarah left on the entire planet, but he felt a stronger resolve than anything he’d encountered over the past five years. It made him stand up just a bit taller. “I appreciate the help, but there’s no way I’m letting you get killed trying to keep me from getting thrown back in a bunker. I’d rather die alone in a bunker than let you get shot protecting me.”

“Chuck, it’s my job to protect you.” It was the first time she’d broken their cover all morning.

But Chuck just shook his head. “No way, Sarah. No way are you getting killed because of something Bryce or I did.”

“I’ve been a field agent for years,” Sarah pointed out, her grip on his arm tightening. “I can take care of myself.”

“I don’t doubt that. But I’m not willing to risk it.” Chuck waited and jerked his arm suddenly, breaking her grip. He started to stroll away—

—Only to find Sarah blocking his path again. “Get out of my way, Sarah. I have to do this.”

“I know fourteen ways to knock you unconscious without either of us moving right now,” Sarah warned. “And I’ll do it. I swear I will.”

“Here?” Chuck pasted a sarcastic smile on his face as he looked around, deliberately indicating the admiring crowds all around them. Early or not, late September was still tourist season. They were far from alone. “Try it.”

It was Sarah’s turn to stare. She stayed in his path, her gaze absolutely level on his face, her features perfectly mirroring the stubbornness on his. After a moment, she looked both sad and resigned. “I’m sorry.”

“For what—” Chuck managed to say before her hand lashed out.

All he saw was black.


	5. Don't Mess With Mr. Rogers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Smelling isn’t everything,” said the Elephant.
> 
> “Why,” said the Bulldog, “if a fellow can’t trust his nose, what is he to trust?”
> 
> “Well, his brains perhaps,” she replied mildly. — _C. S. Lewis_

**29 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**ATHENS, GREECE**   
**10:22 BST**

The vicious, conniving, gin-swilling grandmother of all headaches woke him. It drove a sharp spike of agony between his eyes, pounding viciously against the top of his head and making everything want to explode. Somebody was drumming grunge metal against his skull. Somebody else was bulldozing his brain matter. And yet a third person had taken a jackhammer to the backs of his eyes so hard that even his teeth rattled.

He did the only thing that he felt capable of doing. He groaned.

“Ah, he wakes,” an unfamiliar voice said.

In that instant, a thousand sensations flooded in—movement, pain, traffic noise, hot, stuffy air against his skin.

Chuck opened his eyes and nearly screamed when that made the headache worse. He was only somewhat aware of the green-gray roof over his head, the shelves leading up to it, the fact that he had something shoved up his nose. He dealt with the latter first. An oxygen tube. Great. “Where am I?”

A face filled his vision. Pasty white skin, white-blond hair, pale, pale eyes. An albino? What?

“You’re in an ambulance, mate,” said the man in a British accent.

Chuck’s eyes rolled back in his head.

NAME: KAISER, RANDALL. DOB: 7 July, 1977, Sussex, England, Great Britain. Dual-citizenship, British/Canadian. Arrested three times, suspected ties to Liberal Canadian Freedom Front, known associates Jackson Burton, Terrence Jaymer.

“Whoa, whoa, hold on, buddy,” Randall Kaiser the albino said, misinterpreting the flash as Chuck passing out.

He managed to wave a feeble hand to hold Randall off, even though the flash had intensified the headache to almost beyond tolerance levels. “Sorry, I’m okay. Can I have some morphine?”

“Head hurt?”

“Is the space pope reptilian?”

Randall looked confused. “What?”

Chuck sighed and wanted to close his eyes. “Yes,” he said, keeping his eyes on the ceiling of what was obviously an ambulance instead, “yes, my head hurts. Where’s S—Di—my, uh, wife?”

“Following in her car, buddy. You’re going to be okay. Just looks like a case of dehydration.”

Dehydration, my ass, Chuck thought. If Sarah thought she could just knock him unconscious every time she disagreed with something he did—

Sarah. Randall Kaiser.

Randy.

“You’re Randy!” Chuck breathed, ignoring his throbbing head for once to focus on the man in the paramedic’s uniform leaning over him.

Randy, halfway to reaching for some sort of medicine, froze. “Walker told you about me? That’s not in her usual MO.”

“Uh, yeah,” Chuck lied, for he wasn’t going to just go around blurting out that he had a database in his head more fearsome than Facebook. “She didn’t mention you were a paramedic, though,” he finished lamely.

Randy laughed. He had a thin, unctuous sort of face that Chuck immediately wanted to distrust, but that may have just been the splitting headache talking. “I’m not a paramedic, Pete. We ‘borrowed’ the ambulance to get you away from the Acropolis. You must have really have done something to piss Sarah off if she’s willing to go off-script for this assignment.”

Only one thing in his statement was important. “So there’s really morphine in here somewhere?”

“Of course there is. For you, however…” Randy reached behind him and came back with a small plastic cup. “Sit up and take these.”

Chuck wrinkled his nose to see that there were only two aspirin in the cup. “You can’t give me anything stronger? My head feels like Keith Richards used it for a hotel room.”

“Sorry, orders from Walker.” 

Though every movement made his head scream, Chuck managed to fight his way upright so that he could swallow the pills. “I don’t even want to know what she did to me, do I?”

“Still have all of your vital parts?” Randy asked.

Chuck had halfway moved to check before he stopped himself. “I really don’t want to know. Where are we going?”

“Oh, c’mon, mate, you know I can’t tell you that.” Randy clapped him on the shoulder, and Chuck winced as the movement reverberated through his headache. “Just lie back and enjoy the ride. Keep your eyes closed—the headache never lasts long. Trust me.”

“Been on the receiving end of a few yourself?”

Randy laughed. Though the noise set his teeth on edge, Chuck found himself hating the pointy-faced man a little less. “From Walker? The stories I could tell you. Either way…” He turned and Chuck craned his neck to see a large Greek man driving the ambulance. “He’s awake, Teddy—we can stop circling now and give him back to Walker.”

“Aye-aye, boss.”

Randy turned back to look at Chuck and startled the taller man. Gone was the jollity. Instead, Randy looked like a very pale, very serious operative. “A few rules, Mr. Rogers,” he said in a silky voice.

Mr. Rogers? Oh, right, his cover. There was definitely not a man in a cardigan sitting in the back of the ambulance with Chuck and the albino. 

“Walker contacted me to help get the two of you out of the country. We’ve got a long history, Walker and me, which means that I don’t want some hotshot analyst friend of hers screwing everything up.”

Hotshot analyst friend? Chuck supposed that Randy probably meant him.

“Which means,” Randy continued when Chuck said nothing, “you’ll do as Walker and I say, from here on out. We let you wake up because you’re easier to move conscious, but if need be, we can return you to the unconscious state.”

It would probably help with the headache, but Chuck just crossed his arms and set his chin. He was glad he’d chosen not to lie back down. “Can you swear to me she won’t get killed?”

“We can all get killed.” Randy shrugged. “It’s just the lifestyle.”

“I’m not willing to risk it happening to her because of me,” Chuck said. “She’s a good person. She deserves better than the hand she’s been dealt.”

“She’ll be the first to tell you she makes her own choices.”

“They think she’s a traitor,” Chuck told him bluntly. “Because of me. That’s my fault. They’ll kill her on sight because of it.”

Randy blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“I can’t tell you specifics because, well…” Chuck pushed a hand through his hair and winced when it stood up. “It’s complicated. But what Sarah’s doing right now is because of me. I don’t want her to die because of it.”

Instantly, Randy held a handful of Chuck’s shirt, dragging the taller man closer to him. He leaned in threateningly. “What do you mean, Sarah will get killed on sight because of you?”

“I can’t explain—”

“No, you’ll tell me why, and you’ll tell me now. Teddy!” Randy fired off a long stream of Greek at the ambulance driver.

Immediately, the ambulance shrieked to a halt. Chuck would have crashed against the bulkhead separating the main bay from the driver’s compartment were it not for the iron grip Randy had on his shirt.

“Look, I can’t tell you why,” Chuck said again, stammering now that he realized what exactly he’d gotten himself into. He knew now Sarah wasn’t following the ambulance—Teddy and Randy were supposed to deliver him to some sort of safe-house somewhere. 

Assuming Randy and—yep, the driver definitely had a gun peeking out of the waistband of his paramedic’s pants—Teddy didn’t kill him off first.

“I can prevent her from getting hurt,” he went on, avoiding eye contact with the gun. “I can turn myself in, tell everybody she had nothing to do with it.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because she knocked me out! I was attempting to do just that when she knocked me out in the middle of a freaking tourist site, okay? So if you want to help Sarah, drop me off at a train station and forget we ever met.”

He saw the war taking place on Randy’s face and decided to wait it out. Sarah clearly still meant a great deal to her ex-boyfriend—Chuck wasn’t surprised. People like Sarah always meant a great deal to somebody, even creepy albino men in the back of stolen ambulances.

But his new guardian just shook his head. “I can’t let you do that, Chuck. Walker’s always got reasons for what she does.”

Chuck closed his eyes, resigned. “Fine. Take me to Sarah, then. It’s her funeral.”

Randy didn’t appear to like that anymore than he did, but the man ordered Teddy to continue driving all the same. He leaned back against the side of the ambulance while Chuck collapsed back against the other side, counting each individual throb of the headache tearing his head to pieces. He felt sick, and trapped, and most of all, scared for Sarah.

It was then that insight hit. Randy would do anything for Sarah—he’d made that much clear. And Randy had enough powerful contacts to rate an entry in the Intersect…

“Wait a second,” Chuck said. “I think I know how to protect Sarah.”

Randy’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not dropping you off at the train station.”

“No, no, I don’t want you to do that.” Chuck leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. “Can you get me an untraceable phone with video capability and five phone numbers?”

“Which phone numbers?”

Chuck told him.

**30 SEPTEMBER 2007**   
**SAFE-HOUSE IN ELEFSINA (OUTSIDE ATHENS, GREECE)**   
**16:12 BST**

“Man,” Chuck observed as Sarah closed the door behind their visitor, leaving the two of them alone in the massive safe-house. “Pete and Diana Rogers know how to vacation in style.”

Since he’d been making comments like that for hours, Sarah ignored him. “That was Randy.”

“Did he have my package?”

“He does.” Sarah held up a small cardboard box, her expression puzzled. “Mind telling me what’s in here, Chuck?”

“Randy and I came to an agreement.” Chuck gently pried the box away from her, but didn’t open it. 

The safe-house had more than one room, which meant he had privacy back. Especially since they were the only house for miles, which meant Chuck could actually sit outside with a little bit of safety. He was using the opportunity to work on his tan, neglected during the five years in bunkers.

Sarah, however, didn’t let him get as far as his room. She did one of her lightning-quick moves, blocking his way. “What’s in the box, Chuck?”

“Nothing dangerous, I promise.”

“Then why not show me?”

“Maybe it’s a surprise.” Chuck’s smile was thin-edged. Things were still strange between them even more than twenty-four hours after the Acropolis spectacle. He felt more trapped than he ever had in the bunker in Siberia. It didn’t seem to matter that he understood her stance on the issue—it should be _his_ choice about the lives he endangered, not hers.

But Sarah Walker was a formidable opponent even without the knives he’d seen strapped to her ankles and the badass secret agent persona.

She crossed her arms now, not moving from his path. “I hate surprises.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I like them, personally.”

“Show me what’s in the box, Chuck.”

“Trust is a two-way street,” Chuck reminded her. “If you really want me to trust you, you’ll have to trust me.”

He could see that little dart working under her skin, but Sarah’s face never changed. “Show me what’s in the box.”

Chuck’s fingers tightened for the briefest of instants before he begrudgingly handed it over.

Sarah wasted no time tearing into it. She blinked at the white-paper-wrapped objects inside. “What’s this?”

“Souvlaki.”

“You…got my conman ex-boyfriend to deliver you Greek food?” A line appeared between Sarah’s eyebrows as she looked from the box to Chuck. “What?”

“He mentioned he knew a place with really good souvlaki, and I didn’t believe him.” Chuck took the box back for her and headed for the kitchen. The house was open, airy, and precisely the opposite of everything in his bunker. It gave him the heeby-jeebies. “He also mentioned you were a fan, so I had him get two.”

“Did you now?” Sarah shook her head and followed him. “I guess I owe you an apology, then. I’m sorry. It’s just, I still don’t know who breached the bungalow—”

“Any other clues buried in the menu?” Chuck wanted to know as he stowed the souvlaki in the fridge.

“None that I can find,” Sarah admitted. “I have no idea who would have left it, or why it would set off something in the Intersect about Project Omaha. And I can’t ask any of my contacts what Project Omaha even _is_ because, well…” 

“Off the grid,” Chuck finished for her. “Can I take another look at it?”

“I don’t see why not. It might keep you from going a little less stir-crazy.”

“Ha-ha,” Chuck muttered, but he couldn’t deny it. Three days without computers was the longest he’d ever been, save the few weeks of training camp. Except then, he’d had more than enough to occupy his time, what with trying to survive boot camp. He’d noticed that he had begun to tap his fingers quite a bit due to withdrawal. And if he’d noticed, then Sarah sure as hell had, too. “Where is it?”

“Here.” Sarah rooted through the trash and handed over the menu. “As far as I can tell, everything on the menu seems to be something you would find at a normal family restaurant around here, and I don’t recognize any codes or ciphers within the text.”

Chuck shrugged and turned the menu over. Nothing triggered a flash, but he still couldn’t tell what would have in the first place. “The prices are normal?”

“A little cheap on some things, but reasonable overall.”

“Which ones are cheap?”

“I already tried that,” Sarah said apologetically. “I don’t think the menu has anything to do with anything except making you flash.”

“Except it has my cover name on it,” Chuck said.

“Which is worrying, yes.”

“And the person who delivered it knows I have the Intersect.”

“Another worrying thing.”

“So.” Chuck tossed the menu back in the trash, which seemed to be the permanent hiding place for it. He hoped that he didn’t forget and drop food all over it. “How long do you think Bryce has been in Athens, Sarah?”

Sarah faltered. “Why would you think I think Bryce is in Athens?”

“Somebody who knows our cover and that I have the Intersect?” Chuck strolled out onto the back deck and let the sunlight soak into him, though it did nothing to stem the cold feeling lodged just under his sternum. “No strike team knocking on the door, which means it’s not some random agent the government sent after us. Hence—Bryce.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t figure that out.” Sarah closed the back door behind them and sat on the edge of a deck chair, facing him. “If he was in Athens, he’s long gone now.”

“What’s his end-game, do you think? Why give us the menu? Why Project Omaha?”

“Honestly…” Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You two never discussed anything about Omaha?”

“Not about Project Omaha, no.” Sarah looked away, out into the Aegean. “Can you do me a favor?”

Chuck tipped his sunglasses down, surprised. In the whole time he’d known her, Sarah had yet to outright ask for a favor. But seeing as he pretty much owed her everything, there was no way he could say no—unless it would lead to her getting killed. No favor was worth that.

“Shoot,” he said without making any promises.

“Go for a run with me?”

“What?”

“I’m bored.” Sarah stretched out her legs and actually bounced a little on the edge of the seat. “And yes, admitting that took some doing, so stop looking at me like that. I’m bored, and I get antsy when I go for too long between runs. But I can’t leave you behind.”

“I’ll slow you up—I’m not a runner.”

“It’s okay.”

“All right. If you don’t mind me panting and wheezing like a wuss.”

“Trust me, you can’t be the worst I’ve seen.” A real smile blossomed over Sarah’s face. “I had Randy bring over some running clothes. I’ll just go get them, then we can get changed and go?”

“Sounds great.”

Chuck waited until Sarah had gone inside before he raced off. It took him a minute to find what he sought in the front bushes—Randy had hidden it better than he had suspected—but by the time Sarah returned to the deck, bag in hand, Chuck was sitting exactly where she’d left him.

“Here you go.” Sarah tossed a bag at him—he fumbled to catch it.

“Cool. I’ll just be a second.” Chuck disappeared into the bathroom to change. He had to work quickly. He pulled the second package Randy had left out of his pocket and quickly thumbed through the menu to get the options he needed. The cell phone had already been programmed—Randy was just _that_ good—so it only took a couple of minutes to do what he needed to do. Even so, by the time he came out of the bathroom wearing trainers and running shorts (Randy apparently didn’t believe shirts needed to be worn during a run, but at least the shorts had pockets), Sarah had already had time to change into her own athletic gear.

She raised an eyebrow. “I know. I could really use a tan,” Chuck explained. 

“Put some sunscreen on, at least. You’re fish-belly white.”

“Nag, nag, nag.”

They set off at a moderate pace—or what seemed moderate to Chuck. Sarah was probably stifled, but she didn’t comment. She just loped alongside him, letting him run by the water’s edge where the sand was harder and easier on the calves. Before too long, Chuck started to pant—and then to wheeze—and finally to gasp. Sandpaper grated against the inside of his throat and down his chest, and there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen on the entire planet.

Sarah finally noticed. “Let’s slow down for a couple of minutes. We can walk, take a breather.”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re bright red. Let’s take a break.”

They slowed to a walk. “Don’t let me hold you back,” Chuck told Sarah through pants and gasps. “You go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”

“I’m not leaving you. We’ll just enjoy the walk. C’mon, let’s turn around.” They’d wandered into a more public area, which meant there were families enjoying a late afternoon on the beach all around. Chuck saw a few children chase each other through the surf, laughing. Another set worked on a sand castle, of all things. It made him nostalgic for the days when he would take a day-trip out to Venice Beach with Ellie and their father in his childhood. Their mother had always had something to do.

Sarah bumped him with a shoulder. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“What? Oh, nothing. I was just remembering something.” Chuck scratched the back of his head and was surprised when Sarah grabbed his hand. Immediately, every part of him went on alert. “What is it?”

“Selling the cover. Nothing to worry about.”

“Oh. Okay, then.”

“So what were you remembering?” Sarah prompted after they’d wandered a few feet.

It felt strange to hold somebody else’s hand. He’d noticed early on that Sarah was big on touching, while he himself had always had issues with it, stemming from long before his time in Siberia. But he needed to play along. “Oh, just, you know. Going to the beach as a kid. My sister and my dad and me. Back before Dad split.”

“When was that?”

“Right before I turned seventeen. I moved in with Ellie for my senior year of high school—she was an undergrad then, taking care of a teenage brother. I still don’t know what she was thinking.”

“Is she the one in your picture?”

Chuck raised his eyebrows. He was positive that Sarah had seen the pictures—he’d carried with them since ripping them out of the lining of the parka—but she had yet to comment on either one of them. Now, he pulled the picture in question out of his pocket and handed it over. “Yeah, that’s her. Ellie.”

“You definitely look alike.”

“Yeah. We looked a lot more alike when we were kids, but yeah.” Chuck stared, unseeing, out into the vastness of the jewel-toned water. “I don’t know what the government told her when they stashed me away. I haven’t talked to her in five years. I…occasionally used satellites to, you know, check up on her, make sure she’s okay.”

Sarah handed the picture back, but the line appeared between her eyebrows again. “Who’s the guy with the beard?”

“Morgan. He’s my best friend—and a force of nature.” Chuck smiled. “We’ve been friends since we were kids.”

Sarah lapsed into silence as Chuck tucked the photograph back in his pocket. They walked along the beach until they were out of sight of the vacationing families and Chuck had fully regained his breath. When Sarah suggested they returned to jogging, he gamely agreed, though his legs were killing him. It was, he figured, the least he could do.

“So what’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“Randy’s going to smuggle us out of the country by way of Germany. We’ll need to be on alert—I’m not sure when he wants to leave.”

“Fine by me. And what then? What happens when we get back?”

“We set up a meet.” Sarah shrugged.

“That’s the plan? Really? That’s it?” 

“It’s a work in progress. Save your breath.”

They jogged onward. Fire lit into every part of Chuck, infusing him with agony with every step, but pride kept him upright. He figured that a badass agent like Sarah probably ran at four times the pace and for four times as long, but she didn’t complain as they made their way along the beach side-by-side. When they reached the beach in front of the safe-house, Chuck flung himself down and lay panting in the sand.

Sarah, however, was having none of that. “No, you need to keep moving and cool down, or you’ll cramp up.” She tugged on his hand, trying to pull him to his feet. 

“It’s been five years since I went jogging,” Chuck wheezed at her. “Can’t you leave me alone, woman?”

It took considerable effort on Sarah’s part to get Chuck upright again. He returned the favor by splashing her liberally when he threw himself into the sea. She shrieked—the water was definitely colder than it looked. And the unspoken rules, Chuck felt, for shrieking were that the shrieker needed to get splashed again. He obliged the rules. Sarah’s retaliation was to jump when his back was turned—and dunk him.

He came up gasping and laughing. “Uncle!”

Sarah shoved him into the water again.

This time when he came up, he was a little less amused. “I said ‘Uncle,’ Sa—”

“Shh.” To his utter surprise, Sarah yanked him close to her. He fumbled as a wave drew back into the sea, throwing him off balance. He stumbled into Sarah and immediately tried to backpedal away, but she latched onto his hips and kept him near. She also maneuvered it so that she could still look at the house, though her body blocked most of his from view.

“What are you doing—”

“I saw movement in the house.” Sarah shifted her feet to counter-balance the oncoming wave that tugged at their waists. 

“Oh, fu—”

“How well can you swim?”

He was still winded from the run, and fear was making his heart jack-rabbit against his ribcage and tunneling his vision. Panic made him want to scramble somewhere, anywhere. “I—uh, I don’t know—I wasn’t on the swim team or anything, but Ellie and I used to swim a lot when we were kids—”

“Okay. I want you to swim as fast as you can. Head that way.” Sarah motioned with the tiniest jerk of her head, and Chuck realized just how close they were standing—and how very, very close their faces were. Strangely, it made the panic ebb just a little bit. “Keep going until you can’t anymore, then cross the beach and find the first public place you can. Go to the southeast corner of Syntagma Square and wait for me there, okay?”

“What are you going to do?” Chuck stammered.

“I’m going to deal with whatever’s in the house.”

“By yourself?”

“How many times,” Sarah said, her voice strained, “do I have to remind you that I’m a fully trained operative of the CIA? I can handle myself. Go!”

But Chuck didn’t swim away as ordered. When she shoved at him, impatiently, he instead turned and scurried for the beach.

“What are you doing?!” Sarah chased after him.

Chuck pelted up the beach toward the house, toward the way they’d been running before he’d gone into the sea. He snatched three things out of the sand and grabbed his sneakers—

Only to have Sarah tackle him from behind. “Get down!”

Bullets. Very loud bullets. They tore into the sand less than ten feet to Chuck’s left, sending up individual flumes and kicking stinging grit into his face and torso. Chuck let out a thin scream of terror.

“Those were warning shots!” a voice shouted across the beach. “Next one goes in your skull, Bartowski!”

Chuck edged his chin forward to get a better look, though he wanted nothing more than to run away like a little girl, both hands over his head like some cartoonish oaf. The angle of the sun made it a little difficult to see, but he got vague impressions of a man built like a Kodiak, dressed in black, and carrying a very no-nonsense type of gun. The semi-automatic type of no-nonsense. He was currently pointing it right at Chuck—or Sarah. It was hard to tell, since she was still on top of him, keeping him pressed into the sand.

“Don’t shoot!” he heard himself stammer, and wonder exactly where he’d gotten that amount of bravado. It had certainly never shown its face before. “Don’t shoot! We’ll come quietly, I promise—no need to kill anybody—”

Sarah pushed on his elbow, out of sight of the bear-man with the gun. “Chuck,” she whispered, her lips not moving, “when I count to three, I want you to run—I’ll distract him—”

“The man is armed, Sarah!” Chuck hissed back at her. “I say we do what the grizzly with the gun says!”

“They’ll throw you in a bunker!”

“So? At least we’ll both be alive!” Chuck lunged, using the moment of surprise to knock Sarah loose so that he could climb to his feet. He raised both hands. “No need to shoot!”

More men in the same black fatigues as the leader poured out of the house. Chuck counted three, four, five, and stopped counting before his throat dried up. He could feel every pound of his heart against his throat. His head felt suddenly light and insubstantial, as though he might pass out at any moment. Which was more than a possibility, actually.

Sarah, meanwhile, hadn’t fully risen to her feet. She crouched in the sand, eyeing their captors warily. “What are you doing?” Chuck hissed at her through the side of his mouth. 

“Getting us out of this.”

“Don’t! I’ve got a plan.” 

This was certainly news to Sarah from the way she almost did a double-take. “You have a what?”

“A plan. Just go along with it.”

The man had by now edged closer to them in that confident run-walk that all special ops types used to cover distance when they wanted to look badass. “You done, girls?” he asked both of them.

Chuck tried to look past the barrel of the gun to the chiseled jaw beyond it. “My name is Chuck Bartowski and I’d like to turn myself in now.”

“You’d like to? Like, what, you’ve got a choice? Walker, down on your knees. We need Bartowski alive, but headquarters didn’t say anything about you. One less rogue spy is a banner day in my book.”

But Chuck moved, subtly, so that he stood between Sarah and their captor. He still held his hands over his head, though his thumb, out of sight of the men in the scary army outfits, worked busily. “Not happening. The only way I go out of here without you putting that bullet in my head is if Sarah Walker accompanies me. Alive. And unharmed.”

He could feel Sarah tense behind him. The leader, however, just sneered. “In case you haven’t noticed, genius, we’re the ones with the guns. You don’t get a choice in what happens next.”

“And I,” Chuck said with a confidence he didn’t feel (hell, what he did feel was the need to wet himself. And soon), “am the one with the cell phone, who just sent a video exposing the Intersect project to contacts at five major media companies.”

The guns, which had relaxed the tiniest amount, snapped right back up. “You did what?!” G.I. Kodiak growled.

“It’s encrypted,” Chuck went on, feeling Sarah tense up even further behind him. “In two weeks, the encryption wears off—unless I send a code that destroys the file. And I’m not sending that code until I know Sarah Walker is safe and sound, and back at her job.”

“Chuck,” Sarah whispered behind him.

Chuck ignored her. “I mean it.”

He almost didn’t see it coming, though Sarah did. The leader grabbed him by the scruff of the neck; he dropped to his knees in the sand. Something cold pressed against the back of his neck. Something cold and heavy. Like a gun. Behind him, he heard Sarah start to throw a kick—only to be stopped by one of the leader’s guards.

“Send the code,” the leader barked.

Chuck’s heart had gone beyond jack-rabbiting. It was now beating against his ribs so hard and so fast that it felt like hummingbird wings. His stomach wanted to expel itself all over the sand; he wanted to soil his shorts.

But he swallowed, which did absolutely nothing for his dry throat. “No. Not until she’s safe.”

“You some kind of idiot or something?” 

He heard each individual noise of a safety clicking off. And closed his eyes.

But something that sounded like radio chatter interrupted before he could die with a bullet through the brain. “Van’s here, boss. Driver says the window’s closing. Orders?”

“Take the skirt, for now. We can just torture the code out of the geek later. C’mon, idiot.” The safety clicked back on; the gun lifted from Chuck’s neck. He was hauled to his feet and dragged into the house—where something thick, heavy, and black descended over his vision.

He saw nothing else after that.


	6. The Spy Who Came in From D.C.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. — _Aristotle_

**PART II: PROMETHEUS**

**16 OCTOBER 2007**   
**BURBANK-GLENDALE-PASADENA AIRPORT**   
**18:21 PDT**

“Don’t get used to it,” John Casey growled at Chuck Bartowski as the two climbed down onto the tarmac. “This is the last time the government shells out for a private jet for your overfull skull, got it?”

Chuck didn’t answer. The whole day was surreal—had been surreal since he’d woken up that morning in the hotel. All he could do was lift a hand to shield his eyes, though the sun was already sinking for the evening.

“Here.” Casey slapped something into his chest. Sunglasses. “You left them on your seat. Don’t forget ‘em again. I’m not your nanny.”

“You’d be the world’s scariest nanny,” Chuck said as he slipped the sunglasses on. He took Casey’s growl as assent rather than a threat, and craned his neck to look around. It wasn’t the biggest airport in the world, but there certainly seemed to be a lot of space…and a lot of people…

“Get a move on,” Casey snapped, pushing the skinnier man to ensure that Chuck obeyed. “We don’t have all day to stand around and admire the scenery, Bartoswki.”

“You’re cheerful today,” Chuck observed, but he began walking. “You must really hate airline peanuts.”

“Shut up.”

“Shutting up.”

They went in through the terminal doors to the private terminal. Inside, there were even more people, which made sweat spring cold and damp under Chuck’s suit. Casey, however, was having none of it. He strong-armed Chuck all the way across the terminal to where a car with tinted windows waited for the pair.

“You’re like my bodyguard,” Chuck said after Casey had shoved him into the backseat and had climbed into the front seat with the driver. “Why is that?”

“Is every sentence out of your mouth going to be a comment on my job?”

Chuck opened his mouth to reply, and thought better of it. Instead, he reclined back into the seat and watched the world pass by outside the car. Even after nearly three weeks of being out of the bunker, he still couldn’t believe how wide open the entire world was. The sky, just tinged at the edges with twilight, stretched onward and outward for years. And the _people_ —the thousands and thousands of people. They were everywhere Chuck looked—in other cars, crowding the street corners, sitting out in front of restaurants, walking down the sidewalks…

Why on earth had he thought he could handle coming back to Burbank?

His grip tightened on the door handle, but not to open it. In the car, he was safe. The car was closed off, quiet. But out there…out there the variables came in. All of those people in all of that space, all those circumstances, none controllable or malleable or predictable.

His heart rate kicked up even higher.

“You better not start crying, Bartowski,” Casey called.

It was small and petty to flip him the bird, but Chuck did so anyway. And when Casey didn’t immediately come back to kick his ass, he figured that had been Casey’s plan the whole time. It was harder to freak out when you were angry.

Just another one of John Casey’s little life lessons.

It had been a roller coaster since Athens—the black hood, being loaded into a van right beside Sarah. Being loaded onto a C-130. Being loaded into another van in DC. Being dumped in an underground cell. And throughout it all, there had been Major John Casey of the NSA, who seemed to see it as a life goal to make as many snippy comments as he could to make Chuck as miserable as possible.

They had a dislike/distrust relationship. It worked well for both.

Chuck fiddled with the buttons of his suit coat. It occurred to him that he should probably be curious about what was going to happen next. “Where’re we going?”

“Base,” Casey grunted.

“What are we talking here? Home base? Third base? All your base are belong to us?”

“I’m under orders not to tranq him unless I absolutely have to,” Casey commiserated to the driver, who merely nodded sedately. To Chuck, he growled, “Our base of operations. And what have I told you about nerd speak?”

Chuck went back to watching the world pass by out the window.

The base of operations turned out to be a building that looked dishearteningly like an old bunker. “The government couldn’t clean the place up a little?” Chuck asked in dismay as he looked around at the cracked, weed-ridden parking lot and the squat cinderblock structure. The windows were completely black, a throwback to 80s architecture at its worst. “Please tell me you guys got a two-for-one deal and that’s why this is our new base.”

“Shut up, Bartowski.”

“You just have that one on repeat, don’t you?”

Casey slanted a sideways look at him that promised pain.

“Whose cars are those?” Chuck asked, jerking his head at the only two cars in the entire parking lot.

“The Crown Vic’s mine. Loser car is yours. C’mon.” Casey shouldered his backpack as their airport escort drove away. He led the way across the evening-cooled pavement to the building’s only entrance. “Welcome to the Castle.”

“Is this the one with the princess in it?” Chuck wondered as Casey input the code into the panel by the door. “Or are we going to have to go to some other totally lame castle-slash-secret-government-facility to rescue her?”

Casey’s reply was to go inside—and shut the door before Chuck could do the same.

“Hey!” Chuck pounded on the door…which only succeeded in setting off the alarm. Which was apparently connected to the sprinkler system. The building, parking lot, and sidewalk may have looked like crap, but the government apparently cared a great deal about their landscaping. Chuck was drenched in under twenty seconds. In his new suit. He scooped his dripping hair out of his eyes and spat out the mouthful that he’d accidentally almost swallowed. No telling if government water was safe to drink. “This is fantastic, this is. Just great.”

Casey apparently deemed his penance over. The sprinklers shut off; the door whispered open.

“You done now?” Casey asked as Chuck came in to drip on the carpet.

Chuck just gave him an aggravated look. He resisted the urge to shake himself like a wet dog only because he’d seen Casey in action, and the result wasn’t pretty. So he focused on his surroundings—they’d entered some sort of waiting room lounge, boring colors, uncomfortable furniture, two year old issues of _Time_ and _Us Weekly_.

“Nice.”

“It’s your waiting room, not mine, doofus. C’mon, this way.” Casey unbuttoned his suit jacket and pushed through a swinging door with the name “Pacific Securities, LLC” on it and into a spacious-if-boring office. A glossy desk, taupe walls and carpet, generic paintings on the wall, and a wide window that overlooked the parking lot. The only impressive thing about the whole place was the monster of a computer sitting on the desk.

Casey crossed to this and tapped something on the keyboard. Instantly, a groaning noise made Chuck jump. The bookcase swung out from the wall. Chuck stared for a full minute before he said, “Isn’t that a little Scooby-Doo even for the US government?”

“Shut up and get inside.”

Typically, he had to duck a little to get through the door, but once he crossed through, everything changed. Stale, sterile office space became a moodily lit military bunker—but not the horror movie-esque version from his nightmares. This one actually seemed pretty cool, all bright blue lighting and raw stone walls. They headed down a staircase together and into what seemed to be the main bay…

Chuck stopped dead. “Is that what I think it is?”

“It’s a computer, Bartowski. Shouldn’t a nerd like you know that?”

But Chuck’s face took on a reverence normally reserved for Catholics meeting the Pope. “That’s not just any computer,” he breathed, stepping close. “I can’t believe I’m standing this close to a D-U-97, Freon cooled, reconfigurable thirty teraflop architecture with modules for cryptanalysis and video processing…”

“It’s like watching nerd porn,” Casey observed. “Don’t drip on the mainframe.”

Hastily remembering that he was indeed soaked to the skin, Chuck leaped backward—and nearly ended flat on the floor for his trouble. Casey just raised both eyebrows and snickered.

“Gentlemen.”

A voice behind Casey had both men straightening and turning. Casey recovered first. “General, Director,” he said politely, buttoning his jacket as he faced the bay of computer monitors, all of which contained the frowning faces of their bosses.

“Major Casey, Agent Bartowski…why is Agent Bartowski wet?”

“Just showing him how the alarm works, General,” Casey said.

Chuck straightened his soggy tie. “It’s very effective. The facility has top notch landscaping support equipment.”

The others gave him looks with differing degrees of puzzlement. “Sprinklers,” Chuck explained. “The place has really, really good sprinklers.”

“Bartowski,” Casey growled without moving his lips, which Chuck would find to be a truly impressive feat when he gave it some thought later. Right now, he just edged away from Casey and hoped it didn’t come across the computer screen too obviously.

“I trust the flight went well, Major Casey?”

“Very well, Director. Thank you.”

“And you find the facilities to your liking?”

“Agent Bartowski just finished wiping up the drool, ma’am.”

Chuck gave Casey the stink-eye. Casey ignored him with the ease of practice.

“Very well. We just wanted to welcome both of you to the new Castle facility and inquire about any problems you might have. Seeing none, I’ll wish you both a good night and give you time to settle in. Briefing tomorrow morning at 1000. Major, make certain that Agent Bartowski knows all of the codes and regulations regarding the Castle.”

“Yes, Director.” Casey waited until the screen had gone blank before he plucked a huge manual off of the table and shoved it at Chuck. “Congratulations. Your assignment for tonight.”

Chuck kept the book from clattering to the floor, but only just. “Actually, I need some time off tonight.”

Casey just gave him a look.

“I promise I’ll review the materials, I will, but I absolutely need a few hours tonight. I have to see my sister.”

“Today?”

“Yes. Today. It’s end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it vital, I swear it is.”

“You mean, after five years you can’t wait one more day?”

Chuck bit his tongue. “The five years wasn’t by choice,” he finally said. “I will learn this information, Casey. I will be able to quote you book, chapter, and verse, whatever you need to know. But I’m taking personal time tonight.”

For a long moment, Casey stared at him without blinking or giving in. At length, though, he crossed to a cabinet and keyed in a sequence to open one of the doors. “This watch is to remain on you at all times,” he told Chuck, handing over a nerdy black watch. “If I find out it leaves your wrist for longer than it takes you to shower, your ass is mine, pal. And here’s your new phone.”

“Oh, shiny,” Chuck decided. “I thought I’d have to wait years before I could afford one of these.”

“Those are tax payers’ dollars at work,” Casey warned. “You wreck that, I wreck you.”

“Got it. You’ve got a real flair for words, I must say.”

Casey grunted.

**16 OCTOBER 2007**   
**MADISON MERCY HOSPITAL**   
**21:08 PDT**

He knew that sitting in a parking garage was stalker-like and creepy, but Chuck couldn’t move. Twice, he reached for the door handle, only to draw his hand back. Four times, he gave himself a pep talk. Five times, he berated himself. Absolutely none of it worked. In the end, he just sat in the driver’s seat of the car the US government had seen fit to issue him, and called himself pathetic.

The problem stemmed from the fact that there wasn’t much he could tell Ellie. And Ellie would have questions, lots and lots of questions. Five years before, he’d hugged her at the airport on his way to work a “nondescript government job” and then he’d dropped off the face of the earth. The only thing that would excuse that would be a full explanation with apologies, flowers, chocolates, jewelry, and the last five years back. None of which he had. 

He should have stopped for Godiva on the way over, should have made better plans. But a combination of things had worked against him—it had been five years since he’d been behind the wheel of a vehicle without Sarah in the passenger seat. He hadn’t realized how reassuring a presence she had been until she wasn’t there anymore. Burbank traffic had never scared him before, but by the time he inched the car into the parking spot, he’d been covered in flop sweat and shaking worse than an Everquest addict during a power outage. Even now, he cowered up against the wheel and tried not to worry about the fact that he would have to brave the roads again soon. 

One thing at a time, Chuck.

Over to his left, the door underneath the wash of orange streetlight opened. Chuck flinched and ducked down in his seat as he had every time before.

The lone woman that slipped through looked about the right height, but something seemed…off. Ellie, Chuck remembered, had always moved with the confidence and grace of a power-walker. This woman seemed tired from the tip of her bent head to the toes of her sensible sneakers. Chuck narrowed his eyes, squinting to see better, but the woman moved through the shadows and headed to an SUV without looking up.

He dithered. Should he get out and startle some total stranger? The woman had Ellie’s height, weight, and coloring, but he was too far away to get a clear look at her face…

Nothing creepier than being accosted in a car park.

Chuck stayed in the car and called himself a coward. He watched in the rearview mirror as the woman climbed into the SUV and rearranged a few things that Chuck couldn’t see before she started backing up. As she did so, the SUV backed directly under a street light and Chuck got a clear view of her profile.

“Ellie!”

Everything vanished—the fear, the nerves. Chuck threw open the door and flew out of the car, waving his arms frantically and already starting to chase the car. He saw Ellie’s silhouette tense. The brake lights tapped—probably instinct. The engine roared; he smelled the acrid stench of burning rubber on the air—

Ellie slammed on the brakes. A nanosecond later, her own door flew open and she all but tumbled from the car, her face white and her mouth agape. “ _Chuck_?”

Chuck skidded to a halt. “Hey, sis.”

“What—what…” Ellie trailed off, completely at a loss. The streetlights were too far away to clearly illuminate her features, but Chuck could see just enough. Relief, of all things, made him feel like his knees had been replaced by Jell-O. Ellie seemed frozen in place. “Are you—you’re _alive_?”

Relief fled; guilt stepped in to take its place. “Uh, yes.”

“And you’re—you’re fine? You’re okay? You’re still you?”

Since Ellie was still rooted to the spot, Chuck swallowed and moved forward. With every step, he could see her face in the darkness clearer—until they were right in front of each other. “I’m okay,” he confirmed awkwardly. “Uh, I think I’m me, I haven’t checked lately, but I don’t think I’m Larry Bird or anybody like that, so—oof!”

Ellie barreled into his midsection almost hard enough to knock him over. As it was, he had to take a few steps backward to remain upright, and to wrap his arms around her in return. She smelled like the hospital, the undercurrent of musk and sickness mingling with the astringent tang of hospital cleaners. And that alone made heat build up at the backs of his eyes, so he squeezed them shut and held on.

Eventually, Ellie broke off the hug. Tears were falling unhindered. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

Chuck cleared his throat. “I just moved back.”

“And where—where have you _been_? It’s been—”

“Five years, three months, and sixteen days,” Chuck finished. He smiled sadly. “I can’t tell you where I’ve been.”

“Why didn’t you _call_?”

“I couldn’t. Honestly, El. If I could have, I would have in a heartbeat, but…” Chuck shrugged. “I’m not allowed to talk about it, really. I just got in a couple of hours ago, but I had to see you. You have no idea how much I have missed you and—”

Both of them jolted when Ellie’s pager beeped. She hastily wiped her eyes as she plucked it from the waistline of her scrubs.

“Something the matter?” Chuck asked when Ellie, instead of replying right away, closed her eyes.

She nodded without looking at him. “One of my patients is having complications and the doctor supposed to replace me hasn’t shown up yet…I have to take this.”

“All right. Can we, uh, meet up for coffee later or something?”

Ellie tilted her head back to look at him, her expression absolutely blank, almost glassy. Shock, Chuck realized, though he certainly wasn’t a doctor. He took a half-step forward, though to do what he had no idea. He just wanted to help—he just wanted the pain over.

But Ellie scurried backward. “I—I have to go,” she said quickly, and she fled.

Chuck listened to her footsteps echo in the empty parking garage as she ran away, and closed his eyes. “Good job,” he muttered at himself, and pushed both hands through his hair in frustration. “That went about as well as a Klingon trying to find a date at a Star Wars convention.”

Which was when he realized that Ellie had left her car running in the middle of the lane, the door ajar and beeping insistently.

Chances were, she would realize it pretty quickly and come back. But a million things could happen before that—the car could be stolen, Ellie might remember during the middle of surgery and be unable to deal with herself, and so on. Chuck counted to ten before he climbed into the driver’s side and adjusted the seat (he’d have to remember to adjust it back or Ellie would kill him, just like she’d threatened to all those times he’d borrowed her car in high school). He drove the car back to its original parking spot, locked it, and pocketed the keys. It took a deep breath to actually propel him through the doors and into the hospital, which would be crammed full of people…

But Ellie deserved better than the hand Chuck and the government had dealt her. So his penance would begin with bad hospital coffee, a waiting room, and his own phobias to keep him company.


	7. Good-Bye, Sarah Walker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. — _Samuel Johnson_

**5 OCTOBER 2007**  
 **SECURE HOLDING FACILITY, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA**  
 **09:45 EDT**

Before he’d been thrown in a bunker and left in literally the middle of nowhere, Chuck had never understood that noise could be its own power. That it held tenor, tension, tempo. By listening to even the air around his head, he discovered that he could pick up…things. Currents. Sometimes even emotion. Of course, seeing as his emotions had been the only ones present in the bunker, that hadn’t actually helped him much. But now that the CIA had seen fit to throw him underground once again, it aided him in leaps and bounds.

Because in this underground hell, there were at least other people. Other prisoners in equally tiny cells down a long, godforsaken corridor in this awful place. Guards that walked by every fifteen minutes or so, rapping nightsticks against the cell bars like they were in some old prison movie. Lawyers, representatives, agents that all came to “talk” to those inmates being held. The woman in the cell next to him. Chuck couldn’t see her, but at night he could hear her breathing mingling with his own and the other sleeping prisoners.

He kicked the wall in front of him now with the nondescript prison shoe they’d given him. “Hear that?” he called.

It was a moment before she answered, but that wasn’t unusual. “What?”

“Something’s happening.”

Another pause, this time longer. “Something’s always happening.”

But Chuck heard footsteps nearing, and the way the mutters from the other cells rose. “I think it’s time to face the firing squad.”

“I highly doubt there’s going to be a firing squad.”

“Do you think they’ll let me smoke a cigar instead of a cigarette?” Chuck went on as if Sarah hadn’t spoken at all. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, James Dean could make a cigarette look cool, but I don’t know if I’d be able to pull that off. Especially since it would be a sin to shoot me wearing a leather jacket.”

“Again,” Sarah said, and Chuck heard the note in her voice he’d been aiming for, “I highly doubt there’s going to be a firing squad.”

“Probably for the best,” Chuck decided. He didn’t smile. It would have hurt too much, though the guards claimed his black eye and puffy post-interrogation face were healing nicely. “I’d hate to crap my pants in front of a group of men like that.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I imagine given time you could talk them out of anything.”

This was said with just a tint of bitterness. Because she couldn’t see him, Chuck closed his eyes briefly and leaned his head back so that it rested against the wall. He could the rumblings of each individual footfall heading down the corridor of cells through the concrete beneath him. It echoed through the throbbing veins in his face, through the loosened tooth. Though it would have been more comfortable to sit on the cot, especially given the bruising along his torso, he’d taken the floor between the cot and the back wall. It at least gave him the illusion of privacy.

Sure enough, the footsteps kept going, which meant they were heading for the cell blocks at the end of the hall. Those occupied by none other than Chuck Bartowski and Sarah Walker.

He didn’t look over when the footsteps stopped outside his cell. “You Charles Bartowski?”

“Depends if it’s Ed McMahon at the door or not,” Chuck deadpanned.

He heard the slap of something metal against the thick bars that made up one wall of his cell. “I’m Gwen Davenport with the FBI.”

“FBI,” Chuck echoed. “CIA. NSA. You know what? I’m really tired of initials.”

“Well, here’s a few more for you,” grunted another voice, a familiar one. “MYA.”

“Midgets Yacht Association?”

“Move your ass, Bartowski. Get up.”

At length Chuck did so, but he made certain to stretch each limb, finger, and joint before he turned to face his own version of the firing squad. The FBI agent stood closest the bars, holding her badge up against them. He got a brief impression of boxy, professional clothes and a severe bun holding back gray-streaked hair, eyes that could only be described as piercing—abefore the flash smacked through him.

Ducks on a pond, one landing and about to splash the others—

DAVENPORT, GWENDOLYN A. Agent Status: Active, FBI. DOB: 10 March 1956, Married to Davenport, Gerald, two children, 16 and 13. BA from Harvard, JD from Columbia, stationed in Washington DC.

Formerly in Narcotics—

Approved inter-agency liaison—

Chuck blinked and shook his head to clear the last of the fog. “Inter-agency liaison?” he asked without thinking.

Davenport raised her eyebrows. “My reputation precedes me, apparently. How are you doing, Agent Bartowski? How’s the face?”

“Healing, no thanks to Agent Casey’s buddy,” he said, moving closer but remaining out of reach. Just in case.

“Major,” Casey corrected, quiet threat lacing the word.

“Major Bartowski?” Chuck pretended to think about it. “Has a nice ring to it.”

He thought he heard a snicker from the adjacent cell, but it was the growl that emerged from between Casey’s teeth that took precedence. For the first time since they’d tossed him in this place, he was grateful for the safety of the bars.

“Agent Bartowski,” Davenport said, clearing her throat and drawing Chuck’s attention to her fully. “If you’ll come with me? I’ve been assigned to your case and to protect you from any continuing abuse.”

Chuck was about to open his mouth and reply that he was kind of held back by the bars when the door slid open on its own accord. He stared first at it and then at the FBI agent. “Whoa—how did you—”

“You learn a few tricks over the years. Major Casey is here to keep an eye on you.”

Casey flashed handcuffs and a smirk. Chuck didn’t bother to sigh as he held both wrists out. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

“I should’ve shot you on the beach,” Casey muttered as he twisted Chuck’s arms back to slap the cuffs on—none too gently. But then, Chuck had been expecting that. He gritted his teeth against the way the movement sang through every single one of his bruises. “Would’ve saved me loads of paperwork.”

“Oh, I’m not sure about that, Casey.” Sarah moseyed up to the bars of her own cell and leaned both elbows through, looking entirely casual. She also looked, in Chuck’s opinion, far better in the CIA version of prison stripes. Where he looked like a little kid trying on Dad’s clothes, Sarah managed to bring baggy back into style. “Murder generates its own amount of paperwork. Any District Attorney could tell you that.”

“Would’ve been worth it.” Casey turned Chuck so that he was facing Sarah, deliberately making the handcuffed man stumble. “Say good-bye to your girlfriend, Bartowski. This is the last time you’ll be seeing the likes of this traitor.”

“Wh-what?”

“They’re sending her to the pen,” Casey went on, unable to contain the glee in his voice. “The big house. The slammer, the—”

“I get the picture!” Chuck snapped, but he’d gone dead-pale and was beginning to sway. To Sarah, he babbled, “They can’t send you away! You’re innocent—I know you are, I was right there with you—look, I’ll tell them it was my idea, that I coerced you or something—”

Behind him, Casey snorted at the possibility of that.

“Relax, Chuck,” Sarah said, touching his arm just above the elbow through the bar. Casey jerked Chuck back. “I’m not going to prison.”

“You’re—you’re not?” Chuck twisted to give Casey an accusing look.

He shrugged his shoulders, just a bare movement. “News to me, twerp.”

“I got my orders a few hours ago,” she went on.

Chuck’s eyes widened—he hadn’t heard anybody come into the holding facility.

“While you were asleep. I was just hanging around until your representative got here.” Sarah nodded at Agent Davenport, who nodded back. “Trust Agent Davenport, Chuck. She’s one of the best Bureau representatives—she’ll do right by you.”

“Thank you, Agent Walker.” Davenport took a step forward and put a hand on Chuck’s shoulder, intending to guide him away.

He ignored her. “O-orders?” he demanded of Sarah instead. It occurred to him that in the past week, he hadn’t been away from Sarah Walker for longer than a few hours at a time—and now he had a sinking feeling that he might never see her again. Suddenly, it was much, much harder to deal with all of the noise, and the movement, and the _people_ —

“Chuck!” Sarah poked him in the arm. “Relax.”

“Will I ever see you again?” Chuck found it hard to swallow.

Sarah’s smile seemed forced. “Who knows? I can’t make any promises, you know that.”

“Hey, maybe they’ll have regular visiting hours at my bunker this time. It’s no Cabo or anything, but maybe you could stop by.” Chuck attempted to smile, though he felt the very foundation of his sanity beginning to fissure and crackle around the edges. Everything inside him wanted to flee in a thousand different directions, but several things held him back—most of them being Casey, who still had a firm grip on his handcuffs. And Sarah’s light touch above his elbow, of course.

“There will be no bunkers involved here, Agent Bartowski,” Davenport said sternly. “Now, if we could move this along?”

“Yeah, the government’s not gonna wait all day for you lovebirds to keep twittering,” Casey grunted.

“Go on, Chuck.”

With all three of them urging him away, Chuck had no choice but to turn and start walking. He chanced a look over his shoulder as he was led away, though. “Good-bye, Sarah.”

She gave a sad little wave, just one hand. “Good-bye, Chuck.”

His footsteps as he walked away boomed like the final toll of a clock.

**16 OCTOBER 2007**   
**MADISON MERCY HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM**   
**21:42 PDT**

As far as anybody else waiting in the tiny room on the second floor of Madison Mercy could tell, the man in the rumpled suit in the corner looked completely average and unhindered by the giant room.

Inside, Chuck freaked out.

He’d started out okay. Well, guilty, but okay other than that. He’d even been able to tolerate the hospital noises. The beeping, the nurses’ at the station, the sound of footsteps and gurneys wheeling. Magazine pages turning, quiet conversations in the waiting room. The keys sitting like lead in his pocket buffered all of that somewhat. But slowly, reality had leaked in. Here he was, waiting on a sister who hadn’t seen him in five years, and he had no idea what to say to her. Hell, she’d run away from in the parking garage so fast she’d left her car sitting in the middle of the freaking road.

He saw the walls warp slightly, felt them move in an inch. His breathing began to hitch.

A gaggle of nurses walked by. Their chatter seemed even louder than usual.

Chuck loosened his tie.

 _Whisp. Whisp._ A balding man three chairs down couldn’t seem to find anything satisfactory to read in his magazine. He kept flicking pages back and forth. _Whisp. Whisp._

Why was it so hot? Chuck had always found hospitals cold whenever he’d had the misfortune of landing in one, but now he felt as though fire were spreading through his body, starting below his sternum and scorching its way to his fingers and toes. In what he hoped was an unobtrusive manner, he stripped out of the suit jacket. It changed absolutely nothing.

The walls inched closer. Chuck put his head down and prayed for Ellie to finish up with her patient and come back.

To his left, he heard movement and sound—the unmistakable long-legged strides of what could only be a doctor. Chuck didn’t look up, even when he heard, “Hey, Darla—sorry I didn’t get here sooner—playing squash with the guys—”

The nurse spoke in a softer voice, so Chuck only caught a couple of words of the reply. He lifted his head when those words were “Dr. Bartowski.”

Dr. Long Legs had his back to Chuck. “And she didn’t say why?”

Mutter, mutter. Chuck wished the nurse would enunciate. Around him, he practically heard the walls creak as they inched closer and closer.

“Well, that’s somewhat less than awesome,” the doctor commented. “She was supposed to go off shift nearly an hour ago. Where’s Dr. Markowicz?”

“Accident—the five—”

The walls shuddered like something out of a bad horror movie and jumped. When Chuck blinked, the entire waiting room changed and warped and twisted. His hands began to shake.

“Well, can’t say I blame him, I guess, but do you have any idea what might have upset her? Any idea at all?”

It was too hot, it was too loud, it was too _much_. Chuck wanted desperately to pay attention to the conversation at the desk, but he couldn’t seem to do much more than shake. For the first time in three weeks, he wished that he was back in Siberia, where he hadn’t made his sister cry, hadn’t made his sister run away, wasn’t constantly being escorted around by NSA agents that made porcupines appear like the cuddliest beasts on the planet, where his best friend wasn’t a traitor but a decent guy who sometimes got into gunfights in the desert and needed Chuck to bail him out with satellite support.

The walls groaned. Another inch closer. 

If he ran right now, if he just dropped everything and sprinted away as fast as his legs could take him, would he make it before the walls swallowed him whole? Would he make it before the oxygen ran out, leaving him gasping and dying in the middle of the hallway? He honestly didn’t know. He didn’t think he’d get very far with his feet beginning to tingle the way they were.

“Whoa.” The doctor with the long strides was suddenly a lot closer. As in, right next to Chuck. “Hey, buddy, whoa, what’s going on? You okay?”

Chuck’s chest began to heave.

“Wait a second— _Chuck_?”

His name pushed off the fog for just a second. Chuck stared at the doctor kneeling in front of him, eyes wide. Though his vision was rapidly going blurry, he still managed to recognize the patrician features in front of him. “D-Devon?”

“Wow, buddy, I thought you were dead.”

Chuck went back to freaking out.

“But that’s a story for another time, clearly. C’mon, dude, let’s get you out of here.”

Something grabbed his arm, bodily lifting him from the seat. Chuck had no choice but to go along with it, even when he felt his arm go around somebody else’s shoulders. Throughout the whole thing, Dr. Devon Woodcomb kept up a steady stream of encouragement, but Chuck’s mind had gone fuzzy. He watched the world through a dark, faraway tunnel, barely noticing that his feet were moving.

Devon deposited him on a soft surface and disappeared from view for a moment.

Chuck put his face in his shaking hands.

A few seconds later, he felt a hand pry them away, and something was pushed into them. “Breathe into this.”

Though the words sounded foreign and strange, Chuck obeyed without question.

The first breath did absolutely nothing, but after a minute or two, he felt his world begin to expand and fill with glorious air. Slowly, his vision cleared and he became aware of the fact that he’d been dragged out of the waiting room and into an examining room. His sister’s old boyfriend from medical school stood in front of him, studying him with his arms crossed.

When Chuck finally felt he could breathe without the paper bag, he lowered it. “Hey, Devon.”

“Doing okay, buddy?”

Chuck managed to nod, though he was still shaky and drenched with sweat. “Y-yeah, I’m okay now. Thanks for…” He gestured with the spent paper bag.

“No sweat. Humor me while I check a few things?” Devon asked as he pulled on a stethoscope.

“What? Oh, uh. Sure.” Chuck gulped and attempted to collect himself while Devon listened to his heart. Inside, he was reeling a little bit. Dr. Devon Woodcomb was still part of Ellie’s life? When Chuck had left, the two hadn’t even been seeing each other seriously. Chuck had been leery of the relationship—yes, he was aware that as a healthy young woman, his sister had a sex life, but there had just been something…Ken-doll like…about Devon “That’s Awesome!” Woodcomb.

Maybe he’d misjudged the guy.

When Devon had finished checking his heart, Chuck cleared his throat. “Do you, uh, mind if I…” He pointed at his tie.

“Not at all. Go ahead, get comfortable.” 

Chuck pulled off the hated tie and felt a rush of oxygen flood into the room. It was foolish, he knew—the tie hadn’t actually been strangling him—but he didn’t particularly care. He sucked in a huge breath.

“I sometimes feel exactly the same way, bro.” Devon hunkered down so that he could shine a penlight into Chuck’s eyes. Obviously satisfied, he pocketed the light and held up a finger. “Follow the finger with your eyes.”

Chuck obeyed.

“So where’ve you been, anyway?”

“It’s a long story, and one I’m really not authorized to tell.” Chuck sighed. “As in, they’ll throw me in prison for the rest of my life if I tell you.”

“Whoa. Serious, dude.”

“Unfortunately…” Chuck shrugged, since he couldn’t move his eyes unless it was to follow Devon’s finger. “It’s really not, but orders are orders.”

“So you’re still under Uncle Sam’s thumb?”

Probably for the rest of his miserable existence, thanks to Bryce Larkin. “Yeah. New assignment, actually.”

“Just visiting before it kicks off?”

“Staying, I hope. I came by to see Ellie first thing.”

“Oh?” Devon leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. “And how’d that go?”

Horribly. “Not well. I startled her in the parking garage and she ran off with her car still running. I was waiting to return her keys when…”

“Yeah, let’s talk about the panic attack. Do you have many of those?”

“Not usually that bad. That was by far the worst.” Sensing that it was safe to do so, Chuck hopped off of the examining table and crossed to a roll of paper towels. He began mopping up his face and neck. He knew the walls around them were thin, and little more than an illusion—people could start pouring into the room at any moment, crowding his space, taking up all of the air. But it was amazing just how powerfully the brain could be used to trick oneself. “How often? I’d say, one, two every…day.”

“You’re having daily panic attacks?” For the first time, Devon’s expression shifted from wariness to concern. “How long has this been going on?”

For eleven days, but Chuck didn’t want to admit that. So he just shrugged.

Before Devon could press the subject further, the door opened, admitting Ellie into the fold. She looked a great deal steadier than she had in the parking garage—now it was Chuck’s turn to look like a wreck, apparently. He jolted and dropped the paper towels.

Ellie ignored that. Instead, she strode straight up to Chuck. He braced, expecting the slap that he’d been waiting for since moment one. Ellie looked far too calm, a face he remembered from the time he’d accidentally flushed her miniature tea set down the toilet. Granted, he’d been five at the time, but the look hadn’t changed much.

Without a word, she turned and looked over at Devon instead. “Desk Darling Darla said that there was a commotion in the waiting room?”

“Yeah, nothing to worry about, babe.” Devon flashed her a grin, but Chuck noticed it wasn’t quite endowed with the same confidence of the young doctor from medical school. Apparently, Chuck wasn’t the only one that recognized Ellie’s _look_. “Just a minor panic attack. We took care of it.”

“A panic attack?” Now Ellie turned her attention back to Chuck. She was close, close enough to reach out and grip his arms if she wished, but she didn’t touch him. “Are you okay?”

Chuck nodded miserably. “It’s no big deal, Ellie. That happens to me a lot now.”

“Speaking of which, buddy—I really think you need to see a doctor about this. Not saying you need to go on anxiety meds or anything…” Devon trailed off when Ellie shot a look over her shoulder at him. “Just giving my opinion as a medical professional, babe.”

The last thing Chuck wanted to know was how the Intersect would mingle with anxiety medication. He shook his head. “I’m okay, Devon. Thanks.”

But Devon frowned. “I really think—”

“He said he’s okay,” Ellie cut in sharply.

Chuck didn’t remember his sister being quite this…brittle. “El—”

“You said you’re staying here,” Ellie said.

“Yes, I just moved—”

“Where?”

Where? Chuck blinked at her. “I, uh, I’m not sure yet. Here, I have it written down…” He fumbled in his pocket for the slip of paper Casey had given him on the plane with his new address. He hadn’t even seen the place. “This—that’s my new place.”

“You haven’t even been there?”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I came straight to see you.” Chuck shrugged. “It’s just a place to live.”

“Alone?”

As alone as somebody could be with constant government surveillance. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“That wasn’t quite what I meant…” Ellie nibbled her lower lip, concern evident on her face. She laid a tentative hand on Chuck’s arm, the touch feather-light. “Look, I don’t know what the protocol for having your brother come back from the dead is.”

“Coffee?” Chuck offered weakly. “I could buy you a cup, we could catch up.”

Ellie gave him a “don’t kid yourself” look. All three of them in the room knew that Chuck’s system could in no way handle coffee after such a massive panic attack. “Why don’t you come stay with me tonight? We could catch up and Devon can keep an eye on you like I know he wants to.”

“You want me to stay over, babe?” Devon stood up straight—he’d been leaning against the counter, watching the siblings interact with a wariness most people reserved for being stuck in cages with particularly toothsome rattlesnakes. 

“You’re just going to call every two hours otherwise.” Ellie squeezed Chuck’s arm before she let go and turned. “I’ll call my roommate on the way home and make sure she’s okay with this—do you need a ride, Chuck?”

“I’ve, uh, I’ve got a car.”

“Why don’t I ride with you?” Devon said. “Ellie can give me a ride in to work tomorrow, right, babe?”

“Good idea.”

“Here, c’mon, Chuck, we’ll head on out, let Ellie finish up here—”

“Two things first,” Chuck interrupted. He had remembered why he’d come into the hospital at all. He dug Ellie’s car keys out of his pocket and handed them over. “There. And I need to get my jacket.”

“I can get that for you, bro—”

“Thank you, Devon, but…” Chuck shrugged. “I’m not going to get better if I don’t face up to it.” It was probably pathetic that his obstacle to hurtle was a waiting room when his obstacle to overcome a month before had been Siberia, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He ducked out of the exam room and took a moment to gather his bearings—he couldn’t remember the way to the waiting room, as he’d been a bit out of sorts when Devon had dragged him away. Thankfully, he spotted Desk Darling Darla down the hall.

He focused on counting his steps, as he had in the train station in St. Petersburg. Even though he knew a few of the people in the waiting room watched him curiously, he kept his stare on the linoleum below his feet as he crossed to the jacket. It would have been easier to grab it and run. Because of that, he forced himself to don the jacket there, straightening rumpled material and maintaining as much dignity as he possibly could.

He put his hands in his pockets. Something crinkled.

Confused—he kept things in his pants pockets, not his jacket pockets—Chuck drew out a small slip of paper. It bore a single line of text. A name, actually.

Two things happened at once.

Chuck flashed on the name Phillip Dartmoor.

And Sarah Walker strode into the waiting room.  



	8. The Demise of Frank

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion — _Calvin Coolidge_

**2 OCTOBER 2007**   
**DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT**   
**06:28 EDT**

Every part of Chuck felt the C-130 land, not that that was hard. An autumnal storm had rolled in over the east coast, which had made for an eventful last hour of the flight, and the ensuing questionable landing. But even if the landing had been the smoothest glide over the softest feather down, Chuck would have felt it. Every part of him seemed enlarged in some way to the point of exploding. His head would likely split in two at any moment, his teeth and jaw throbbed, and his torso had swelled so much that it belonged to the body of a giant.

Sarah, handcuffed to the seat next to him, had spent most of the flight tensed up so that she wouldn’t accidentally jostle him and exacerbate his injuries. She looked over when the plane finally thudded to the tarmac and Chuck groaned. “You okay?”

The plane bounced a few times for good measure. Chuck shut his eyes and whimpered. “When my grandchildren ask if I was cool, please don’t tell them about this moment.” 

Sarah tried to give him a bolstering smile. The problem with her smiles was that she rarely hid what she was truly thinking around him anymore. Her eyes gave her away every time. They were annoyed now, mostly at others. Though Chuck knew he shared some of the blame for that.

“Trust me, Chuck,” she said. “If your grandkids ever have the opportunity to ask me if you were cool, I’ll have plenty of other examples.”

“Thanks, Sarah.”

“Hey, lovebirds!” Major Casey, their personal major pain in the ass, didn’t look up from his card game near the cockpit, though the landing had surely splashed the pot “Can it!”

Chuck rolled his eyes—and instantly regretted it when the movement sang through his black eye. He winced.

“What is it?” 

“Nothing.”

“Oi.” The current bane of Chuck Bartowski’s existence half-rose from his seat across from the pair, his hand on the butt of his gun. “The man said shut your—”

“Smith!” Major Casey rose from the table and used the guide-ropes hanging from the top of the plane to navigate his way back to the shorter man. He slammed the man back into his seat by a shoulder. “What did we talk about?”

Smith said nothing. He just chose to glare at Chuck.

“Answer me when I ask you a question, soldier!”

“If I speak to the prisoners again, your foot will find its way so far up my ass that it will take all of NORAD and a personalized, hand-drawn map to find it, sir!”

It wasn’t the most mature move, but Chuck and Sarah muffled their snickers. Or at least Chuck did until the snickering reminded him that he was currently suffering worse than a milksop stuck in the middle of a bar fight in an Irish pub. He began coughing.

Casey half-turned. “You got something you want to add to this, Bartowski? Or you just want to get more blood on a multi-million dollar government piece of property?”

“Leave him alone, Casey.”

Casey sneered. It was somewhat undercut by the fact that the plane bounced a little on the tarmac—even the taxi toward the end couldn’t be smooth, apparently. Casey had to tighten his grip on the overhead straps, but he maintained his sneer. “You always get your girlfriend to fight your battles, Bartowski?”

“Why not?” Chuck coughed a little more. Thankfully, he’d stopped coughing blood a couple of hours into the flight. “She’s good at it, judging by that lovely shiner you’re sporting.”

Casey growled and probably would have attacked him had his second-in-command (who had been his third-in-command back in Greece, Chuck noted, before the fiasco with Smith) not approached and muttered something to the Major at that moment. Casey grunted his acknowledgment before he stalked away to the front of the plane.

Chuck remembered something. “And she’s not my girlfriend!” he called after Casey, lamely.

“Way to stick to your guns there, Chuck,” Sarah muttered.

“What? What if you wanted to date one of these guys and they got the wrong idea?”

Sarah gave him a deadpan stare before she pointedly swept her gaze over the guards. Two were sleeping at the poker table, one was cleaning his fingernails, and Smith sat there like a great hulk, glowering at them.

“Point taken,” Chuck said. A coughing fit overtook him.

Sarah leaned close, but not close enough to bump him. “Seriously, Chuck, are you okay?”

He took a minute to cough out most of the phlegm that had gathered in his chest. Smith’s interrogation/beating before they’d left the air base in Italy had done more than a number on him—it had stopped the show with a full tap-dance, aria, and encore. “I’m fine,” he managed. “Nothing either a full body transplant or a short spin in a Bacta Tank can’t handle.”

“Bacta Tank?”

“We’ve really got to work on your education in the classics,” Chuck said, mustering up a smile since she looked so worried. The plane finally slowed to a halt, so he looked around even though it killed his neck by inches. “Guess we’re here. What happens next?”

“Hopefully we get you some medical attention.” 

“A Two-One-Bee of my very own. Sounds nice.”

“I don’t get that either. But you’ll have to send that code that destroys the file about the Intersect that you sent out to the media.”

Chuck’s face, a swollen mass of purple and waxy skin, firmed up. “Not until I get reassurance that they’re not going to assassinate either of us in our cells.”

Sarah shifted against her handcuffs. “We’re back on US soil. We’re safe.”

“This is the same government that can throw somebody in a bunker against their will for five years. I’m not taking any chances.” Chuck’s face hadn’t changed during the interrogation session with Smith that had ended with the other man’s fist through his face a few times before Major Casey had broken things up. It didn’t change now. “When we’re both safe, I’ll send that code. And not a moment before.”

“Well, either way. We’ll convince the CIA, NSA, and the national security council that we’re not traitors, and that we shouldn’t be thrown in prison or an underground bunker, you’ll send the code, we’ll get our new assignments. And when that happens, I go off the radar, kill Lieutenant Smith, and make it look like he had an accident involving rusty garden shears. Several times.”

“Is that all?” Chuck coughed again, his strength dwindled to nothing. He kept his head off of the back of the seat by sheer force of will. “Piece of cake.”

**17 OCTOBER 2007**   
_**CHEZ** _ **ELLIE**   
**00:02 PDT**

“And, of course, a blanket for the night.” Ellie frowned as she laid the last item on the couch beside Chuck. “I’m just glad I keep a few spare toothbrushes around for Devon’s frat brothers if the gang crashes here. Of course, I can’t do much about clothes for you…”

“The bike shorts are fine,” Chuck insisted for the fifteenth time, even though they were giving him a wedgie. “I’m just grateful Awes—I mean, Devon—keeps stuff here at all. My clothes were getting a bit ripe.”

“Well, they should be dry by morning—I’ve got them hanging up in the bathroom.” Ellie glanced around the living room of her apartment, nibbling her lip as she pondered what else she could do. “Do you think you’ll need anything else?”

“Honestly, Ellie, this is more than enough.” Chuck smiled. “I would’ve been comfortable with a patch of floor and a sleeping bag.”

“Like I’m going to make my baby brother sleep on the floor.” Again, Ellie bit her lip. “I’m sorry I don’t have your old room available—”

“Don’t worry about it. I like the new roommate. She seems to have a lot of…character.”

“Yeah, she’s great.” Ellie, obviously not in a hurry to go to bed—or maybe just afraid to let Chuck out of her sight now that the shock had passed—sat down on the couch next to him.

“I gotta ask—”

“Why aren’t I living with Devon by now?” Ellie laughed, just a little hollowly. “It’s complicated. We only just got back together.” When Chuck gave her an alarmed look, she shrugged. “We broke up after you…left. And I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Again, Ellie, I’m sorry. I can’t say it enough. If I could change it, I would in a heartbeat, but—”

“Nothing we can do about that now,” Ellie interrupted. She sighed and glanced at the clock. “I’ve got the early shift tomorrow, unfortunately. As much as I’d love to stay up and catch up some more.”

“Go on, get some sleep.” Chuck patted the pile of supplies she’d deposited on the couch next to him. “I’m more than taken care of out here.”

But before Ellie disappeared into her bedroom, she gave him a long hug. “I know I didn’t seem like it at first,” she said, “but I’m glad you’re here. And alive.”

“I’m glad, too. I missed you.” Chuck waited until his sister was almost out of sight. “Hey, El?”

She half-turned. “Yeah?”

“I know it’s only about ten minutes after midnight, but…Happy Mother’s Day.”

He heard a sniffle before the door closed, but the guilt it caused was just another drop in the ocean threatening to drown him. Once he was finally alone, Chuck put his head in his hands and sighed. Inwardly, he counted backward from ten—on three, he felt the couch shift beside him as somebody else sat down, but he didn’t look up. “Explain.”

His companion was silent for a moment. “Your face looks better.”

“Thanks. A week with the best doctors the government can get works wonders. I’m fine—better now that the panic attack’s over.”

“You getting those often?”

Every day since they gave you your orders, Chuck thought, but didn’t say anything. “You told me in the hospital, ‘We don’t know each other. Blow my cover and I’ll kick your ass.’ I kept the deal, Sarah. Now tell me why you’re suddenly in southern California and rooming with my sister instead of undercover in some place like Jakarta in a knife-fight with an evildoer.”

“I requested Jakarta, actually.”

Chuck finally looked up—like himself, Sarah had changed into sleep gear, only she was lucky enough to avoid wearing Devon’s bike shorts. He squinted at her T-shirt. “Hey, is that mine?”

She glanced down at the Stanford lettering on her chest. “I guess. Ellie said she was going to throw a whole bunch of stuff out, but I took a few things. You know, just to sleep in. My cover’s out of work and I can’t really justify spending a lot on clothing.”

“Oh.” Chuck shook his head—it was probably best not to tell her that shirt had been Jill’s preference for sleeping shirts. He focused on the matter at hand. “Why would you request Jakarta?”

“I didn’t literally say, ‘I want to go to Jakarta.’”

“I figured.”

“But I did put in for field work again. Actually, I put in a request to go after Bryce.” Sarah looked briefly troubled, but she seemed to shrug it off. “The home office felt my unique abilities might be of more use here, protecting you and your sister.”

“So they listened to my demands,” Chuck said dully.

“Chuck, you single-handedly out-bluffed the government of the United States. Of course they listened to your demands. That’s why Casey and I are in Burbank.”

“Why you two, though?” Chuck frowned. “It doesn’t make any sense. You’re a field agent, and he’s…” He trailed off. He could think of about a hundred words to describe Major John Casey, and only four of them were anything approaching pleasant. “Him.”

“Security detail for the Intersect compound was his job. And since you _are_ the Intersect compound now…” Sarah shrugged. “It makes sense. Plus, he and I are the only ones that know you’re the Intersect. And since Bryce going rogue is fairly well-known, putting his partner on a domestic field desk as punishment is a logical move. Assigning John Casey out here also makes sense because on paper, it looks like he screwed up, too. Casey and I took the black marks on our records to make it look real.”

“You shouldn’t have had to do that.” But it did explain why Casey hadn’t been the most enthusiastic person on the planet about hopping a plane cross-country. Chuck and Bryce had managed to wreck what was probably an exemplary record. No wonder Casey had been so pissed. “Is this even what you want to do, Sarah? I mean, you’re the jet-setter. Secret missions, karate-chopping bad guys in the neck, hell, I bet you even have, like, a closet full of ninja outfits.”

“Not a closet,” Sarah said evasively.

Chuck narrowed his eyes at her, trying to imagine it. Deciding that this one was probably best left alone, he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For the bluff.” He’d thought about the apology a thousand times over the past two weeks, but this was the first chance he’d truly had to voice it. “I know you’re mad at me for going behind your back and getting Randy to deliver that phone, and then for not telling you the bit with the code and the media agencies was just a bluff. And you should be mad at me that my demands got you stuck in southern California instead of a bar fight with a bunch of corrupt oil sheiks, so I’m sorry about that, too.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“Okay. Sorry if it’s too much—”

The last thing he expected Sarah to do was laugh, but a chuckle bubbled out nonetheless. “Chuck, you of all people should know that we rarely get a choice in what we get asked to do. So what if I’m, as you say, stuck in southern California? You’re not in a bunker, and I’ll be able to get a tan without worrying about dehydration for once.”

Chuck gave her a confused look.

“You know, because most of the time I get tans is while I’m in the desert and never sure when water was going to—oh, never mind. Quit smiling.”

“It’s a hard knock life, Sarah Walker.”

Sarah shook her head and clapped him on the knee before she rose from the couch. “Get some sleep. Team Bartowski kicks off tomorrow.”

“I like the name. Give you a dollar if you use it in front of Casey.”

“Deal.” With one final dazzling smile, she left him on the couch.

**17 OCTOBER 2007**   
**CASTLE**   
**09:58 PDT**

“Walker.”

“Casey.”

Chuck, following Sarah down the stairs to the main bay, paused on the landing. “Is it just me,” he said, “or did it just get _really_ chilly in here?”

“Shut up, Chuck.”

“Shut up, Bartowski.”

Sarah’s order had been said with a smile, Casey’s less so. “Glad you two agree on something, at least. Ready for our first official meeting? Go team and all that?”

From the tightening of Casey’s jaw, it was obvious that there might be another “Shut up, Bartowski” in the near future, but the computer screens along the wall all flicked on at once. All three agents hurried to what would become their permanent briefing posts. Casey standing in the middle, with Chuck to his left and Sarah to his right.

General Beckman’s eyes swept over her unlikely team. “Good morning.”

They all muttered morning greetings with varying levels of enthusiasm. Chuck wondered why Director Graham wasn’t hovering over Beckman’s chair. Wasn’t this supposed to be a joint operation?

“Welcome to the first official team meeting of Operation Prometheus. You’ve all been selected because, well—you know what’s in Agent Bartowski’s head. All of you know how you got here, so no need to rehash that, I suppose?”

She managed to form an actual question in such a way that it became completely rhetorical. Chuck had to admire h-er for it.

“In reality, the briefing this morning will just to be to go over a few security details. Director Graham sends his regards and his regrets that he was unable to make it this morning.” Beckman’s lips firmed, a line of disapproval, but she plowed on before anybody could comment.

The next twenty minutes were a revisit of the things the Director of the CIA had told Chuck before he’d departed DC. Regular hours in the Castle with what Chuck was privately calling surveillance dumps of passenger lists, cargo manifestos, and other things taking place up and down the pacific coast—check. His cover identity as a security software designer—check. His team working as part of his operation, Casey on security and now, Sarah Walker on paper as the office manager for Pacific Securities, LLC—check. Beyond top secret clearance—check. They were to report solely to Director Graham or General Beckman, and then only orally via secure connection. Preferably within Castle or the apartment Chuck and Casey were now sharing.

Chuck listened to all of the protocol involved and nodded along at appropriate moments, though he’d already memorized the necessary data. The only thing that had really changed was Sarah being in on the operation—he’d been positive that the CIA would send another agent and that Sarah would be on spec to track Bryce, which was an unofficial mission of Operation Prometheus. Not an active one, General Beckman specified, but if Chuck were to, say, overturn any intelligence on the whereabouts of one Bryce Larkin, the Prometheus team would be cleared to follow any leads.

It made the scrap of paper burn a hole in his pocket, but he kept silent.

“Agent Walker, Director Graham has requested a private briefing with you in the com room.” General Beckman’s eyes cut to her agent and the Intersect. “I’m certain Agents Casey and Bartowski can find something to occupy themselves in the meantime?”

“C’mon, Bartowski. Let’s get your nerd brain in gear. General.” 

“Major Casey.”

Casey grabbed Chuck just between the shoulder and neck, hauling the skinnier man out and up the stairs.

“Ow! Geez! I would’ve gone along on my own—” No amount of wriggling could loosen the NSA agent’s grip. Chuck was dragged up the stairs and through the Scooby door into his own office. Casey released Chuck and shoved him into the chair in the same motion. Immediately, Chuck massaged his abused shoulder. “Was that really necessary?”

“Team meeting in an hour. Start setting up those brilliant schematics you promised in DC.”

Chuck frowned at the desk. “I seem to recall requesting more monitors than this—”

Casey moved the stapler. Two panels in the desk slid open with silent efficiency—two flatscreen HD monitors popped up.

“Wow. Never let it be said that the NIA shirks their show business quota—”

“NIA?”

“You have to admit, CIA/NSA is a mouthful.”

“NSA/CIA,” Casey said.

“Two CIA agents, one NSA agent. Ergo—”

Casey growled, just a small, almost silent noise. It still contained more than enough threat for Chuck. “And which branch screwed up and blew up the Intersect?”

“And which branch _let_ —”

That was as far as Chuck got before Casey had him by the throat.

“NSA/CIA it is,” Chuck managed to rasp.

Casey took his time letting go. “How long before your setup is operational?”

“What? Honestly, Casey, I haven’t even had the chance to review the system, I don’t know what state it’s in and what needs to be calibrated—”

“So? How long?”

“Could be days, could be minutes, could be hours.” Chuck pushed his fingertips against his closed eyelids briefly, trying to search for an appropriate answer to the man whose face never changed its stony countenance. “Geez—look, let me assess the situation, get back to you, okay? I’m working blind at the moment, but I’ll have a better picture soon.”

“You’ve got until the team meeting.”

I guess I’d better get to work then.” Chuck nudged the pencil cup, picked up the post-it note station.

On his way out the door, Casey paused and sighed to himself. “I’m not sure I even want to know, but _what_ are you doing?”

“If moving a stapler nets me two extra monitors, I figure the post-its merit a Red Bull, at the very least.”

Casey just grunted—maybe it was an aural hallucination, but Chuck swore he heard a tinge of humor in this one. “Get to work, Bartowski. And don’t spend the hour spying on Walker.”

“I can _do_ that?”

“Forget I said anything.” Casey stalked away to find something to do in the front room. 

Once the other man had disappeared completely, Chuck let out a long breath of relief. Alone at last. It was a flimsy illusion, he knew. Casey was only a room away, and Sarah could emerge from downstairs at any moment. But right now, he was alone. Blessed solitude—now he could sit down to _work_.

Forty-five minutes later, Casey poked his head back in. “Fifteen minute warning, Bartowski.”

Chuck grunted.

He’d programmed his watch—an all-new electronic leash/tracker gifted by the good old boys at the home office, as his old one was probably leading the government on a merry chase through Beijing by now—to give him an eight minute heads’ up, so seven minutes after Casey’s warning, his head shot up. He jolted out of work mode as his eyes fell on the manual Casey had shoved at him the night before. He had just enough time…

It was the simplest thing in the world to skim the section on surveillance and input the codes he needed to access all the feeds. A screen not unlike something from the _Brady Bunch_ opening credits overtook each monitor. Only instead of the youngest one in curls, Chuck could see the main bay of Castle. He began to click through—

His upstairs office (he waved at the camera), the detention cells, guest bedroom, outside where his Subaru sat squished between Sarah’s jeep and Casey’s Crown Vic, his sister’s bedroom—“Empty but _awkward_.”—a couple of other rooms at his sister’s place, and—

“Wow.” Chuck blinked at the arsenal/locker room. “That is _a lot_ of guns.”

He took a moment to fully appreciate how this might make Casey’s assignment in Los Angeles better before he clicked again, this time bringing up the training room. This one featured something much scarier—a blonde CIA agent. Judging by the way she was whaling on the training dummy, she was more than just a little pissed off.

“Do you have any idea what the director wanted to talk to Sarah about?” he asked Casey when the scowling NSA agent came back in.

Casey took one look at the monitors and cuffed Chuck on the back of the head. “What did I say about spying on Walker, Bartowski?”

“I—I wasn’t—I was just looking through the manual, the one _you_ told me to review, and I was navigating through the vid feeds and saw this, that’s all.” Chuck tapped the monitor, disturbing little ripples of plasma across the image just as Sarah, on screen, landed a kick that would have certainly ended the family line of the poor, innocent training dummy. Masculinity demanded both Chuck and Casey wince. “It’s a little cause for concern, wouldn’t you say? I mean, I know we’re all supposed to train and keep in fighting shape, but this just seems…”

“Vicious,” Casey finished with a nod.

“Terrifying was the word I was going for, actually.” Chuck watched the one-sided battle dance on, remembering all of the times Sarah had claimed she could take care of herself during their fugitive days. The woman might have been many things, but a liar wasn’t one of them. “Should we, uh, should we wait until she’s done for the team meeting? I don’t exactly want to interrupt her little love-session with Frank.”

“Frank?”

“The dummy. I embrace the thought of having my limbs—specifically, _all_ of them.”

Casey waffled. On screen, Sarah’s kick should have taken off Frank’s head. “A few minutes wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Casey decided quickly.

But they heard Sarah’s watch beep on the audio feed. She delivered one final crushing kick to the ill-fated Frank and scooped up a bottle of water. “Chuck? Casey?” She glanced over her shoulder as she called this, expecting both men to be downstairs already.

Upstairs, Casey shoved on Chuck’s shoulder. “Guess that’s our cue, Bartowski. March.”

“You first.”

“Coward.”

“She can’t kill you without causing an inter-agency scandal,” Chuck pointed out. “She kills me, the only one upset is the CIA. Despite the government intel in my noggin, I’m just a _little_ more expendable, wouldn’t you say?” He deliberately left out the part about how John Casey’s brawn made him an admirable human shield.

But by the time the men had descended into the Castle, Sarah was seated at the briefing table, her manner calm. All except her eyes, Chuck noted as he cautiously sat down opposite her. They looked both furious and troubled.

“Have a good chat with the director?” Chuck felt bold enough to ask.

Sarah moved a shoulder.

“All right. Moving on, then. Casey, what’s on the agenda?”

“First assignment. There was a shoot-out in a club in Chinatown last night.” Casey clicked something on the remote and instantly every screen in the room filled with surveillance photos and video of said club. Chuck could only feel relief that nothing about it caused any flashes—his head felt logy and disconnected enough already. Ellie’s couch hadn’t been the most comfortable sleeping arrangement. Hell, he’d slept on barn floors more comfortable—though that may have had to do with the company. “Normally, it wouldn’t be a task for Prometheus but…well, watch this.”

He clicked the remote again. Video rolled.

Chuck’s jaw dropped when a sedate night club turned into an old wild west shoot-out. It unfolded quickly—a woman strode in, guns already out. Tables were overturned, people jumped for cover. And twenty-four seconds later, the same woman ran out through a different door, noticeably limping.

“When did she get winged?” Sarah asked.

Casey studied the remote to locate the button he needed. He rewound the feed.

“There!”

It took a couple of tries for Casey to stop the rewind on the proper spot. After a moment, Sarah snatched the remote away from him and tossed it to Chuck. It took him three seconds to study the remote and one attempt to find the right spot on the video.

“She’s aiming for the man in the wheel chair,” Sarah observed, studying the trajectory. “He’s well-guarded and those are—”

“Those are Chinese-army issued pistols,” Chuck interrupted, his voice almost mechanical.

Casey and Sarah turned to look at him as one. “And how would you know that?” Casey asked.

Chuck merely tapped his temple.

“Get a flash on who she is?”

“No, just the guns.”

“I’m going to go through channels, figure out if the Chi-Coms sanctioned a hit last night.” Casey, with one last glower at the remote in Chuck’s hand, stalked out to one of the underground offices.

Sarah, meanwhile, moved to the computer bay across the room. “Watch that footage again,” she ordered Chuck. “See if you flash on anything else. I’m going to contact local hospitals, see if anybody came in with a gunshot last night. It’s slim—the woman looks well trained, military bearing, so she’ll know rudimentary field medicine, but…”

“It’s worth a shot,” Chuck said, his eyes already roving all over the view-screen in hopes that something would cause a flash of intel. He still didn’t have quite the handle on how the Intersect flashes worked, but he’d picked up that they recognized patterns in the intended targets—tattoos, odd facial characteristics, birthmarks. And the woman currently shooting up the Chinatown club was a beautiful woman, but nothing really stood out about her.

Still, he zoomed in close and used the remote to track her progress through the fight. Sarah was right—military bearing, sure-handed despite using two pistols at once. He saw the look of more surprise than pain when she got, as Sarah put it, winged, but he also saw the steely resolve take over her face. A woman on a mission.

It was a look he recognized from just outside the Erectheion, when Sarah had knocked him unconscious. It made him shudder.

“Did you get something?” Sarah called from the other side of the room.

“Unpleasant memories.”

“Um, okay.”

“Say, when you knocked me out in Athens, how’d you do—never mind, I think I…” On screen, the woman shooting up the club turned—and her jacket rucked up her arm. The flash hit him mid-sentence. Tiger, tanks, Chinese files, CONFIDENTIAL.

Sarah, sensing something from his silence, wandered over. “What’s up, Chuck?”

“Her name’s Mei-Ling Cho, she’s Chinese intelligence, and she’s never been on US soil before.” It came out in a rush. Chuck realized the video was still going and paused it before he rewound to the close-up of the tattoo on Mei-Ling’s arm. “The Intersect noticed the ink.”

Sarah took her time surveying the picture. “All right,” she merely said, and went to pound on the door to Casey’s office. “We’ve got a break out here, killer,” she called through the door.

“Killer?” Chuck echoed.

Sarah shrugged. “Nicknames aren’t my thing.”

Casey came out before Chuck could comment. “What is it?” Once Chuck and Sarah had filled him in, he nodded, just once. “And nothing at any of the area hospitals?”

“Seven gunshot wounds, but nobody matching Mei-Ling’s description.”

“Seven.” Chuck made a humorless ‘heh’ noise. “Seems like a low number for LA.”

“Officially, no sanctioned hits from the Chinese last night.”

“Unofficially?”

“Seems to be the same.” Casey crossed his arm as he studied the freeze-frame of Mei-Ling still up on the screen. “While they put me on hold, I did some digging—the club is owned by a guy named Ben Lo Pan. Guy seems to own about a third of Chinatown, so it’s not surprising.”

“She was aiming for him,” Sarah observed, frowning. “His bodyguards seem like they were waiting an attack. Coincidence? What on earth would propel her to act against him—and why does he know she’s coming?”

Chuck kicked the floor, sending his wheeled chair to the nearest computer console. He began typing, fingers flying.

“Care to share with the rest of the class, Bartowski?”

“Shh,” Chuck said without looking away from the browser. A minute later: “Aha!”

“What is it?”

“Take a look at this.” Chuck reached behind him without looking and snatched the remote. The picture on his browser immediately overtook every other computer screen in the joint. He pressed the space bar and security footage from the Chinese consulate began to play. All three watched as an upwardly mobile young man chatting on his cell phone was snatched from the street and shoved into the back of a white van.

“Professional job,” Casey remarked.

“That’s Lee Cho,” Chuck said. “When I flashed on Mei-Ling in the Intersect, it mentioned family. One younger brother. He’s in LA right now—or he was two days ago, when this footage was taken.”

“Seems like my contacts may have neglected to mention a few things,” Casey growled and stalked off to make amends for that—Chuck didn’t envy whoever would be on the other end of that phone line. He didn’t get long to send pitying thoughts that person’s way, however, for Casey turned just before he went into the office. “Walker, you and Bartowski should probably get dressed.”

“I _am_ dressed,” Chuck pointed out, though Sarah was still stripped down to work-out clothing. Which didn’t seem to be more than pants and a training bra. And yes, he’d had a hard time concentrating. At first. A little. He was only human, after all. “Okay, so maybe my suit’s a little rumpled, but it’s clean—”

“He means for our assignment.” Sarah grabbed Chuck by the elbow to pull him along. “Congratulations, Chuck, we’re going undercover.”

“W-what? Um, I should probably warn you that I’m not exactly qualified on any weapons right now, so if it comes down to me and some bad guys and fisticuffs, is there like a twenty-minute tutorial you could take me through?”

“Relax.” Sarah continued dragging until they were in a locker room in the back of Castle. “We’re going undercover as detectives to view the crime scene at the club, I highly doubt there’s going to be gunplay. Your clothes for the assignment are in there—I’m going to go shower real quick.”

And she headed toward the showers, already stripping clothes. Chuck didn’t precisely see anything the sensors would have disapproved of, but the _suggestion_ was there and—he turned abruptly toward the locker she had indicated, positive that he was flushed bright red. In fact, he was still a lovely shade of crimson when Casey stomped in and immediately began to strip. Chuck kept his eyes forward like he’d once done during boot camp and changed into his detectives clothing—a boring brown suit. Apparently, he was not going to be attempting to use any ladykiller skills on this mission.

Casey’s suit at least made his shoulders look broad and threatening—not that it took much. Chuck watched him holster his sidearm and fought the dual feelings of wishing he had a gun and loathing the sight of the weapon in general. Not for the first time, he wondered if those feelings had showed up on some secret psych evaluation and if those feelings had been the ones to land him in the bunkers.

Probably.

Casey caught the scowl on his face. “What’s your problem?”

Chuck slammed his locker closed. “The freaking government. Let’s go pretend to be somebody else.”


	9. It’s Chinatown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I speak of home, I speak of the place where—in default of a better—those I love are gathered together; and if that place were a gypsy’s tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding. — _Charles Dickens_

**17 OCTOBER 2007**   
**THE BAMBOO DRAGON**   
**14:04 PDT**

“All I’m saying, and the point I’ve been trying to make this whole time is that I don’t understand why _I’m_ the rookie in this situation. I still think we should take turns or draw straws for the position next time.” Chuck knew it was petulant to cross his arms and sulk in the back of Casey’s Crown Vic, but there didn’t seem to be much stopping him. “That cop back at the night club was about two seconds from patting me on the head and giving me a grape lollypop. I mean, did you really have to tell him it was my first day on the job?”

“How else were we going to explain the sweat, the flinching, and the fact that you spent the entire time hunching forward like a little girl?” Casey said as he muscled his way over to a mercifully open spot in front of the curb.

“I could be deathly ill. Or recovering from something.”

“And contaminate their crime scene?” Casey rolled his eyes. “Try again. We’re here.”

But when Chuck reached for the door handle to follow the others into the Chinese food restaurant, Sarah slapped a hand on the door. “I think you should stay in the car, Chuck,” she said, looking apologetic.

“First I’m the rookie, now it’s stay in the car? Great.”

She leaned close so as not to be heard by passersby—grumbling, Chuck rolled down the window so that he could hear. “We think that they’re holding Lee Cho here, seeing as the van they used came from the Bamboo Dragon—”

“The Bamboo Dragon?” Chuck said. “Wait, I know this place. This is a favorite of Morgan’s—”

“His friend,” Sarah explained to Casey.

“And I’m pretty familiar with the layout myself, having enjoyed quite a few evenings with Morgan and the famed Sizzling Shrimp. C’mon, I could really help you out!”

“Chuck,” and Sarah leaned close again, this time speaking under her breath, “we’re going in there to lure a dangerous Chinese spy out before another shoot-out like last night can happen, and maybe it’s not the best idea to be taking an unarmed agent with a supercomputer in his head into that situation, hmm?”

Chuck scowled. “I’m going back to Castle and getting a gun now,” he muttered. “At least try and bring me some Sizzling Shrimp?”

“You stay in the car and I’ll think about it.”

“Wait a second!” Chuck nearly scrambled out to keep them from going inside. Only the thought of Sizzling Shrimp kept him in the Crown Vic. “What about Lee? You’re going to rescue him, right? I mean, this whole thing with Mei-Ling, she’s obviously just looking out for her brother and—”

“She’s a foreign intelligence officer unwelcome on US soil,” Casey growled.

“But, but her brother—”

He saw Casey and Sarah exchange a look, and the way Sarah shifted between him and Casey, taking point. “We’ll do our best,” she promised without meeting his eye fully. “Just stay in the car.”

Chuck folded his arms and sighed. “Next time I’m not the rookie,” he muttered, and sat back to enjoy his exciting mission—keeping the car from floating away, apparently. It would probably be an exciting mission…if he lived in some place like Eureka, maybe.

**17 OCTOBER 2007**   
**THE BAMBOO DRAGON**   
**14:28 PDT**

He came to regret that thought. Rather quickly.

“Look, look, look,” he said, well aware of the fact that he was stammering, “there’s really no need for that—ow—do you _mind_? I only have two of those and I need that one to hear with!—no need to shoot anybody here.”

“Drop the kid, or I’ll shoot you!”

“Drop your guns, or I’ll shoot _him_!”

“Please,” and Chuck stressed the word as best he could, bent backwards as he was, “can we just come up with a plan that involves _less shooting_?!” He couldn’t do anything about the fact that Mei-Ling was at least a foot and a half shorter than him, and the fact that she had him by the ear. Or the icily cold gun barrel she had pressed to the side of his neck, even though it was broad daylight in the middle of Chinatown.

Well, at least she’d dragged him into an alley. Less chance of a bullet ricocheting and killing an innocent, assuming the Chinese intelligence officer could miss from two inches.

Chuck figured that wasn’t a safe assumption.

“Put the kid down,” Casey growled, inching forward into the alley. Chuck figured he was wearing his warrior face but he couldn’t actually see anything beyond the extremely large barrel of Casey’s gun.

Still, he had to bristle. “Kid, Casey? I’m twenty-seven!”

“Chuck!” Sarah was a little easier to see beyond her gun—it may have been the blonde hair. “Not helping!”

Indeed, Mei-Ling’s grip on Chuck’s ear/collar/hair area tightened, making the tall man yelp. “Why,” she demanded without moving the gun from the side of Chuck’s neck, “is the FBI investigating a shooting in Chinatown?”

“Why is Chinese intelligence shooting up Chinatown?” Casey countered.

The gun jammed into Chuck’s neck. Hard. He all but whimpered. “How did you—” Mei-Ling began.

“Still think you’re dealing with the FBI?” Casey smirked and shifted his grip on his gun. He and Sarah stood, two points on a very scary triangle, with Mei-Ling and the captive Chuck bringing up the third point. Both agents had the isosceles stance down perfectly. No way was Mei-Ling going to barge past these two immovable points. “Face it, lady. Your case went up the chain. Now drop the kid, and we’ll escort you off of US soil and let your government deal with you.”

“No!” Mei-Ling’s grip tightened once again. “I’m not leaving without my brother!”

“Well, it appears we have a problem, don’t we?” Casey said.

“Guys, guys, Mei-Ling, if we agree to help your brother, will you please let me go?” Chuck scrambled for something, anything to grasp onto so that he could have a foothold in this conversation. He should have been used to his heart pounding and his head spinning by now, but it still stole his breath and made him almost gasp. He had no idea how Mei-Ling kept her grip when he was sweating as copiously as he was.

Because he was so close, he heard it—just the slightest hesitation, a tiny hitch in Mei-Ling’s breath. 

“No can do,” Casey said. “Not working with the Chinese.”

“Even to stop a Triad scumbag?” Mei-Ling snarled at him.

“Who says we need your help stopping a Triad scumbag?”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Chuck put both hands out, fingers stretched, in a desperate plea. He’d heard the hesitation, so maybe if he could just keep talking, he’d sway at least Sarah. And having two people with guns on his side was better than just the one with the gun to his neck. “Mei-Ling, we can help you. We have the resources, we can rescue your brother. But my coworkers, they’re a little less trusting than me. They can’t help it—Casey wasn’t hugged enough as a child, or maybe he was dropped on his head as a baby and that part of his brain is broken. And Sarah—well, actually, let’s not talk about that. But they don’t trust much, so maybe, I don’t know, you would maybe, um, offer up state secrets or something like that as a sign of faith?” The last bit was said in a rush.

He felt the instinctual anger send a shockwave through Mei-Ling, and had to bite hard on his lip to keep from shouting when she yanked on his ear.

“You mean defect,” she said, though it sounded more like a snarl.

“Maybe not that far,” Chuck began to say, but Sarah stepped forward.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what he’s saying.”

“If I defect, I can never go back to China. I’ll never see my brother again.”

Chuck felt his throat closing, but now was not the time to give into acute panic. He’d do that later when it was more convenient (as if it worked that way). “But if you don’t,” he said, his voice thick, “you’ll lose him forever. And you don’t want that.”

He felt the tension in Mei-Ling’s arm ricochet up into her hand. “I want your word,” she told Casey and Sarah. “You’ll help rescue my brother.”

“ _If_ you defect,” Sarah stressed. Casey couldn’t seem to speak beyond his disgust at willingly working with a Chinese spy. “And you let my agent go—without shooting him. I’d hate to have to break in a new one at this point.”

Chuck bit his tongue over a hurt comment. In the distant, objective part of his brain, he had to admire what Sarah had just done. In one statement, she had single-handedly established herself as team leader, Casey as team muscle, and Chuck as the team screw-up.

Thanks, Sarah. He’d frown about that later when he didn’t have a gun making the acquaintance of his jugular.

Behind him, he heard Mei-Ling suck in a breath. For one perfect moment, the world stood stock still. Traffic noise ceased. Birds stopped chirping. Even the radio playing Top 40 hits from a window above the alley went silent. Chuck could only hear his breath rasp loudly against the inside of his ears, and Mei-Ling’s rapid breathing behind him, quick, almost fluttery.

“They’re holding my brother at Ben Lo Pan’s estate,” she finally said. “I’ve tried, but I can’t take it down myself. A few more bodies would help.”

“As long as they’re live ones,” Chuck pointed out quickly as images from the video surveillance of Mei-Ling’s gun battle the night before flashed across his vision. They made an entirely new layer of sweat pop out against his skin at the thought that that same gun was now pointed at his neck. “Let’s go rescue Lee! Go team, right? Right, guys?”

“Let the geek go, and we have a deal,” Casey finally said.

Of course it couldn’t be as simple as that. Mei-Ling waited one long, humming eternity before she reluctantly loosened her grip on Chuck—and wiped her hand on her pants. 

He popped up immediately and scrambled away, moving behind Sarah by instinct. Sarah put out a hand on his arm, a silent command. _Stay_. Chuck was only too happy to oblige.

“You break your word, and I’ll kill you all,” Mei-Ling said.

“Same goes, sister. C’mon.” Casey patted Mei-Ling down, revealing an arsenal of weapons that rivaled the ones Chuck had seen Sarah don in the locker room. Casey led the Chinese spy away to the backseat of the Crown Victoria while Sarah dragged Chuck out of the alley by the wrist.

“Why didn’t you stay in the car?” she demanded, pushing on his shoulder so that Chuck had no choice but to crash back onto the Crown Vic’s hood. She immediately stepped in and invaded his personal space—but only to examine his neck for any damage.

“She had a gun, Sarah! She told me to get out of the car!”

“Moron!” Casey reached out to cuff Chuck on the back of the head, but Sarah shot an arm out, blocking him. It didn’t stop the scowl. “It’s bulletproof glass.”

“Something that would have been helpful to know _before_ the crazy woman with the gun came out of nowhere and abducted me, don’t you think?”

“Suck it up.” Casey focused on Sarah. “Is he hurt?”

“Standing right here, you know.”

“He’ll have a bruise.” Sarah, satisfied that that was the extent of Chuck’s injuries, took a prudent step back. “You can just tell everybody it’s a hickey, Chuck.”

“From who? The ghost of girlfriends past?”

“It’s LA,” Casey pointed out. “I’m sure that somewhere here, there’s somebody willing to give a nerd like you a love bite. Get in the car.”

But Chuck didn’t move from the hood. “He’s a happy person,” he remarked to Sarah, almost sarcastically. “I really appreciate that about him.”

She fought off a smile. “Mm.”

“And he works hard, so—”

Casey beeped the horn; Chuck fell off the hood and barely caught himself before he clattered to the pavement. Laughing a little, Sarah snatched his elbow and steadied him. “You take shotgun. I’ll ride in the back with the Chinese spy,” she observed. “Just another day in the wonderful life of Team Bartowski.”

“Good use of the name, but you didn’t use it in front of Casey, so no dollar for you.”

“Hah,” Sarah said, and slipped into the car.

**17 OCTOBER 2007**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**18:42 PDT**

Uncle Sam had set Casey and Chuck up as roommates. Even though Chuck understood the reasoning behind it, and could appreciate it from a clinical, objective standpoint, he much rather would have found a hole of his own in some obscure neighborhood rather than sharing a fancy apartment not far from Ellie’s place with the man who made grunts not only vernacular, but necessary vernacular at that. But at least the government had sprung for fancy digs and hey, he had his own room rather than sharing with another analyst in a frozen bunker in the middle of nowhere. It was a spacious, airy space on the top floor of the apartment, done in warm and tasteful colors.

He almost preferred the bunker.

While Casey dug up floor plans for the estate belonging to Ben Lo Pan, and their favorite Chinese national paced the apartment’s roomy kitchen, he climbed the spiral staircase up to his loft/room. He flicked on the overhead light panels—evening had already cast southern California into a hesitant gloom.

“How do you like it?” a voice asked behind him.

He wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t heard Sarah climb the stairs. “Is it really safe to store me on the fifth floor?”

“Store you?” Sarah pushed gently on his lower back to propel him into the room—his room—for the first time. It was fitting, he figured. She’d been the force behind his leaving the bunker, she could be the force guiding him into his new room and his new life. “Relax, Chuck. There’s a fire escape with easy access from your balcony, and we’ve installed a zip line for a speedy getaway. I just thought after all those years of being underground, you’d want some place with a view.”

“So the snipers can get me?” Chuck tried to infuse his voice with humor, but it fell flat. He forced himself to cross the room and open the sliding glass door, a peace gesture. The evening air felt cool against his skin. It should have relaxed him; it made him want to run back downstairs, to the windowless living room where Casey had set up all of the monitors. But he forced himself to step outside and to move over in case Sarah wanted to join him.

The balcony overlooked the neighborhood park, a green expanse covered by criss-crossing running and walking paths. It was fairly active in the evening light, people either jogging or strolling along in pairs. A pick-up game had just started on the softball field across from the balcony.

“Ellie and I used to come here all the time,” he said, not sure why he was telling her this but still needing to say it. He leaned his elbows against the railing and stared at nothing. “Back when I was in high school. Dad had left, and Ellie and I combined could barely make rent. Plus, I was studying for a full ride scholarship and she was pre-med, so we both just had so much homework. All we could really afford to do was study in the park. Right over there.” He pointed. “I never thought I’d see this place again—and now I live right above it. I’ll be able to see it first thing in the morning, if I want. Life is surreal sometimes.”

Sarah mirrored his stance, but instead of studying the park, she kept her gaze on his face. “I should have seen that you would visit her right away, and I should have had Casey prepare you about my cover. I’m sorry for that.”

Chuck didn’t look at Sarah. “Ellie and I were all each other had. And then she didn’t even have me anymore.”

“You didn’t have her, either,” Sarah pointed out.

Chuck moved a shoulder, one of Sarah’s habitual moves. It had become instinct. “At least I knew _something_.”

Sarah didn’t seem to have a reply for that. She turned her face toward the park and toward the last remnants of sunlight pearling the sky to the west, saying nothing. It was a comforting thing about her, Chuck had discovered before they’d even left Russia together. Not many people could make silence comfortable.

Of course, not many people could make him this uncomfortable with silence, too. But that was his problem, not hers. He’d deal with it. 

A thought occurred to him. “Wait…how were we going to explain to Ellie about your being—”

“Your secretary?”

“Office manager.”

Sarah’s grin flashed. “Good question. The original plan was that my blonder tendencies would mix up your name—Mr. Kowalski. I was supposed to tell Ellie about this interview I had with Kowalski and then we’d stage a meet-cute in front of Ellie where we realize that it’s a crazy small world out there, and the nice guy that gave me the job as secretary—”

“Office manager.”

“—Is actually my roommate’s long-lost brother.” Sarah deliberately twirled her hair.

“Do you actually enjoy playing a dumb blonde?”

Sarah punched him in the shoulder.

“So, now what, now that Ellie knows we’ve met?”

“I already took care of that.” Sarah smiled. “I called and left her a voicemail earlier. Raved about my shock that my big interview was with you, of all people.”

“And how’d you do? On the interview?”

“Oh, I was good, but you were incredibly nervous.” Sarah nudged him with a shoulder, her smile turning impish. “You’ll let me know by the end of the week, won’t you, Mr. _Kowalski_?”

“If you’re the best candidate for the job, sure.” Chuck couldn’t help but smile back. “We’re proud to have you with Pacific Securities, LLC, Miss Walker. I’d say let’s go have drinks to celebrate, but honestly, at this point a bar would just shut down my central nervous system on the spot.”

“And we’re busy tonight, remember? Rescuing a low-level Chinese diplomat from the evil, evil Triad.”

“It’s a glamorous life.” Chuck took one final look out at the park. “Guess we should go down—Casey’s probably got those plans figured out.”

“Okay.” Sarah waited until Chuck had come back inside with her before she closed the sliding glass door behind them. “What do you think of the place, otherwise?”

“I like it.” Chuck’s eyes roved over the walls, painted a soothing royal blue, the blue plaid duvet, the wide desk with the newest desktop model already awaiting him A flatscreen TV ate up most of the wall opposite the bed. “Excellent interior decorating by the Agency.”

“Thank you.”

Chuck, at the top of the stairs, paused and squinted at Sarah, as though seeing her for the first time that night. “Wait a second—did _you_ do all of this? The apartment, the decorating… _Castle_?!”

“I only oversaw Castle, but they let me have more of a hand with the apartment.”

“Even Casey’s room?”

“Yes, even that.”

“So, he’s sleeping on what—a bed of nails?”

“Are you kidding? That’s way too comfortable for him.”

Casey’s distinct growl—annoyance, slight menace, Bartowski’s making my life hell—drifted up the stairs. “You two realize that that being a loft bedroom means I can hear every word you two say, don’t you?”

Chuck popped his head over the waist-height wall to scowl down at the bottom floor.

“What?” Casey demanded, almost looking innocent. “Get over it, Bartowski. It saves on surveillance equipment.”

“If I ever do find a girlfriend,” Chuck grumbled as he followed Sarah down the spiraling staircase, “at least that solves the debate of ‘your place or mine?’”

Sarah didn’t seem to find that as amusing as he did.

**17 OCTOBER 2007**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**19:08 PDT**

“So the cameras are TKX-50s…” Sarah frowned at her computer monitor and kept clicking until it brought up a list of physical properties for the security cameras on Ben Lo Pan’s estate. “Little outdated, but they _are_ equipped for remote access.”

“Let me see that.” Chuck slid his chair over and paged through the specifics. After a moment, he nodded. “I can hack these.”

“Are you sure?”

Chuck’s grin flashed. “Are you really doubting me about computer stuff? You stick to being super-spy, I’ll be the computer whiz-kid.”

“Are you two done?” Casey wanted to know from the other side of the room, where he and Mei-Ling had stuck the blueprints for Ben Lo Pan’s estate up on a whiteboard. They’d formed something of an uneasy alliance between the unlikely allies, but Chuck and Sarah had had to be on their guard all afternoon to keep Casey from saying anything that might cause an international incident. “Chuck, you work on setting up the hack, we’ll need a seamless loop so that we can take out the guards.”

“Aw, you called me Chuck.”

“Shut up, Bartowski.”

“And there it is.” Chuck turned his attention back to studying the specifics, freeing Sarah to wander across the room and plot how to take out all of the guards, which weapons would be most effective in this situation.

All three turned down Chuck’s suggestion of “nunchucks, they work every time!” He decided that it might be best to put his head down and get to work.

Twenty minutes later, he carried a small device from his own arsenal over to Casey. “Here you go. This will get me access to the cameras—I’ve already input the override codes for you, so it should be idiot-pro—good to go.” 

Nice catch,” Sarah said under her breath. Casey just glared.

“Here, I put together a diagram of how you’ll need to hook it up.” Chuck, keeping a wary distance, used the remote to drag his work from his own screen to the living room’s overlarge TV. “You should be able to just clip into the wires here and…here.” He used the laser pointer to indicate which nodes and then nodded at the device. “I’ve labeled them A and B for you. Should be pretty easy.”

Casey gave a half-shrug. “Okay. Good work.”

Chuck blinked. “Did you just say—”

“Don’t spoil the moment, Bartowski. Go outside and wait for the van to show, and if I hear you’ve had another one of your panic attacks from just standing out on the sidewalk, my foot will go so far up your—”

“Got it, got it. Foot, ass, NORAD, hand-drawn map.” Chuck rolled his eyes, grabbed his keys and hurried away before Casey could decide to make good on his word, panic attack or no. The rebellious side of him muttered that it wasn’t like he could help it. It wasn’t his fault, after all, that the government had stashed him underground for five years.

Or was it?

He stepped outside and took a deep breath, prepared to wait for that van until kingdom come, if only to prove to Casey that he could handle it.

**17 OCTOBER 2007**   
**OUTSIDE BEN LO PAN’S ESTATE**   
**19:56 PDT**

He was feeling a lot less together when the van did show, and it turned out that he would be driving it—while three agents bailed out the side door. “I don’t understand why you can’t just jump out of the van while it’s standing still,” he’d pointed out to Sarah, who’d pulled him aside so that Mei-Ling and Casey could assemble weapons. “Does the van really have to be moving? What if I’m going too fast? You could sprain your ankle or something—”

“Chuck, Casey has a better jump record than most Army Rangers. You can bet Mei-Ling’s done worse than jump out of a slow-moving vehicle.”

“And you?”

“I promise you, if I sprain my ankle, I will let you say, ‘I told you so.’ Now, I’ve already explained why we need to bail while the vehicle’s moving, so we’re not going to go over that. Instead, walk me through your part of the mission.” And she had drilled him on the subject so many times that now, two hours later, he could recite the directions in his head.

 _Drive under the speed limit_. No use getting a speeding ticket and having police be even more suspicious of an unmarked black van.

 _Count the lamp-posts on Ben Lo Pan’s street. When you get to twenty, alert the team and start slowing down_. The team that was currently stashed in the back of the huge Dodge Charger, crouching in various poses of situational awareness. They looked like an actual strike team, dressed in black, geared to the teeth, and toting very dangerous, very scary guns.

_As we approach the gates, count down from ten. Keep your speed low, drive straight. Casey will jump first, then Mei-Ling, and I’ll bring up the rear._

“Twenty,” he called, having passed the appropriate lamp post. He kept his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, taking into account every wobble as he slowed. There was a huge difference between driving the compact he and Sarah had shared from Poland to Greece, and his Subaru, and a gigantic Charger. Up ahead, he saw gates, impressive brick and ironwork creations that all three of his teammates would soon scale like squirrels. He gauged the distance and began counting down from ten.

On three, the door opened.

On one, they jumped. Soundlessly. Chuck strained his ears for the splat of a body hitting pavement, but once again, Sarah had been right. Not a sprained ankle to be heard. The door slammed shut behind them and he sped up a little, as he’d been instructed.

_Park in front of the neighbor’s house, but stay in range. Turn off the lights. Get started on the surveillance equipment right away._

Well, at least that part was easy. Chuck sidled the van so that it was within a foot of the curb and scrambled into the back. Unlike his teammates, he wore jeans—the first he’d worn in five years—and a ubiquitous black hoodie. He pulled up to wall of monitors they’d installed on a cart strapped to the wall in the back. Thankfully, nothing had shifted en route, which meant that everything he needed was ready to go. He pulled on the headset.

“Chuck here, guys. How’s it going?”

There was a pause before anybody answered. On the corner monitor, he could see the feed from Casey’s over-ear camera bobble as the agent ran. Chuck watched for a few seconds, but had to turn his gaze back to the control boards or risk serious seasickness.

“We hear you, Chuck.” Sarah’s voice, barely audible. “Hang tight a second—”

On the lipstick camera, Chuck saw Casey reach the fuse box and pry it open. Apparently, he’d been listening to Chuck’s instructions, for he set up the device and every monitor in the place sprang to life with the feeds Chuck had allotted for each monitor. “We have lift-off,” he announced. “Now you get to hang tight while I set up the loop.”

**17 OCTOBER 2007**   
**OUTSIDE BEN LO PAN’S ESTATE**   
**20:09 PDT**

“Initiating loop…now.” Chuck moved the fader bar, dissolving between the live feed and his preprogrammed loop so that the transition would be seamless. On the corner monitor, Casey’s lipstick camera swung around so that Sarah’s face appeared in view. He waved, though she couldn’t see him.

“Chuck, you’re our eyes now,” she told him.

“All right.” Chuck scanned the monitors. “All right, you’ve got one guard up at the station—”

“Thank you!” Casey’s voice was terse as he went and dispatched the guard with an efficiency that would frighten Chuck when he thought about it later. Right now, however, he just kept his white-knuckled grip on the edge of the monitor cart, even though the back of his mind made kung-fu noises to go with the actions of his teammates.

“Three guards in the kitchen,” he announced. “Be careful, though, they’re bigger than the first guy—oh, wow. Ooh. Nice!”

It happened quickly—a kick to the face, a karate chop here, a taser to the neck there. And an occasional yelp from Chuck in the van to keep things interesting. Through the lipstick camera, he watched the team prowl through the tastefully decorated estate—heavy eastern overtones to the color scheme and décor and some great wall art he would love to check out later. Maybe he’d review the tapes after the mission to get a few tips for his new room at the Bachelor Pad—

He nearly shouted when the monitors all died at once—save Casey’s lipstick camera.

“Guys! Guys, if you’re seeing this, you might want to get out of there!”

No answer. Dead comm. A litany of very creative swear-words ran through Chuck’s head as he stared, frozen in shock, at the wall of dead monitors. And just as he turned toward his last beacon of hope, the lipstick camera fell to the floor, briefly transmitting a sideways view of the room.

Before it was crushed by a boot. 

The monitor cut abruptly to black.

Had somebody found the van? Or was it just inside the house where they’d been caught? Chuck knew that Casey was carrying a small monitor in his pocket with the feeds from the security cameras, a decoy to draw any suspicion away from the huge black van parked within transmitting distance. But if the guards had noticed…

Chuck tripped as he scrambled back into the driver’s seat, where he would be able to hopefully see if his car was attacked by ninjas or something.

Which was a ridiculous thought. Ninjas were Japanese. Ben Lo Pan was Triad, Chinese, and therefore not likely to have a team of ninja assassins on string for situations such as this. Chances were, there wasn’t going to be throwing stars taking his head off at the neck anytime soon. But Chuck still scooted down as low as he could go while still keeping an eye on the house.

Across the lawn and the courtyard, he saw the front doors open. Ben Lo Pan’s thugs had made short work of neutralizing the team, binding wrists and taking weapons. They led Sarah, Casey, Mei-Ling and…that must be Lee Cho. Oh, good. He was still alive. Chuck felt a surprisingly strong surge of relief flood through him at the thought. At least something about this mission was going right.

Of course, a rather sobering thought followed on that one’s tail. All of his teammates were now captives of Triad. And who knew how long Triad would keep a couple of low-level “FBI Agents” alive?

“Dear God, please let their covers hold up.”

Chuck watched the thugs march the captives across the lawn, dread eating his stomach worse than a bucket of hydrochloric acid to the gut. He had absolutely no idea of what to do now—his instructions from Sarah had only covered what to do in a perfect setting—with three stellar agents working together, they hadn’t even considered the possibility of feces hitting oscillating blades.

“Next time,” he muttered, ducking lower so that only the top half of his head was visible from outside the van, “we’re going over every damn thing that can go wrong, up to and including the Hellmouth swallowing us whole.”

One of the captives stumbled—Sarah! Chuck immediately shot upright, one hand automatically reaching for the door handle. To do what, he had no idea. But she righted herself before he could move, and none of the guards pistol-whipped her…

In the back of the van, static grumbled. Chuck glanced back, certain he heard something. “Casey?” he asked, though he knew it was impossible for Casey to be in the back of the van when he was still surrounded by Triad guards half a block away.

The static cut off. Chuck watched the thugs toss first Mei-Ling and her brother into the back of a delivery van, and then Casey, and finally Sarah. When the van pulled out of the driveway, Chuck didn’t think—he just stabbed the key into the ignition, twisted, and set off to follow. A constant stream of cursing in his head kept him company as he followed the van out of Ben Lo Pan’s upscale neighborhood and onto the freeway toward Chinatown. Every mile or so, he unglued one hand from the death-grip on the steering wheel to rub his soaked palm on his jeans. When the Bamboo Dragon van pulled off the freeway, he did, too.

“That’s weird,” he said, blinking. In some corner of his mind, he made the observation that now that he’d escaped the bunker, he’d finally snapped and begun talking to himself. It was probably a sign of insanity. But he didn’t stop. “Why would they turn off here, it’s still a couple of miles to the—”

Ahead of him, the van began to accelerate. 

“What the—”

Chuck forcibly stopped his foot before he could stomp on the gas. Had they made him? Should he speed up, keep following? Or maybe he should peel off and hope against all hope that they were indeed heading for the Bamboo Dragon like the van said, and he could find a way to help out there….

He didn’t see the flare of red taillight splashing across his windshield until it was too late.

“Oh, crap,” he yelped just before impact.

_CRRRRRRRUNCH._


	10. Rule Number Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While no one is expected to leap tall buildings in a single bound, our aspiring heroes will be tested on their courage, integrity, self-sacrifice, compassion and resourcefulness — the stuff of all true superheroes. — _Stan Lee_

**17 OCTOBER 2007**   
**ABANDONED LA STREET**   
**20:32 PDT**

It was like an explosion. In space. Without fire or flame, but the noise was immense. Something like the sound of bubble wrap being popped, magnified by a thousand, accompanied by a jolt that shook the entire world. Chuck’s entire body whiplashed—his forehead smacked into the steering wheel as both hands flew back and his body rippled like a demented Gumby doll left in the sun. He bit his tongue. Hard.

He was out for maybe two seconds. It was more like blinking than passing out.

Copper flooded his mouth with its disgusting tang. He shook his head out of reflex—and groaned when this turned out to be a Very Bad Idea.

His vision was still swimming when he saw the men swarm out of the van.

“Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap—”

Some random impulse made him stumble toward the back of the van rather than the driver’s side door, tripping over cables as he hurried. He all but exploded out of the back door, his body already in motion to run as far and as fast as he could.

But his left foot caught one of the free cables.

He stumbled his way out of the van, clattering to the concrete in an awkward pile of uncoordinated limbs. He glanced around him, some old instinct making him assess the situation. An alley, twenty feet away. 95% chance of making it without getting shot, but it could be a dead end.

A mailbox. He could hide behind it like a kid in a game. 100% chance of getting found and killed.

Store fronts. All closed. 10% chance of finding an open one. 8% chance of survival.

Chuck did the only thing that came to mind. He dove under the van.

And not a second too soon.

He’d just whipped his right chuck under the car when footsteps rang out, pounding around the side of the van. Rapid fire Chinese accompanied them. Chuck watched the world at foot-level, the trouser-clad calves and dress shoes that prowled around the van, obviously looking for him. Two sets sprinted away, the third waited, pacing with frustrated energy.

Chuck stopped breathing. Every breath in his body seemed to collect just below his frozen sternum. The sensation grew until he felt as though he were going to blow apart at the seams. His hands twitched against the concrete, tremors racing up his arms and legs.

Chinese again. This time, it was farther away, maybe coming from the alley. Not a dead end, apparently.

The third pair of feet ran off toward the alley. Chuck counted to three—which took a small eternity—before he began to army-crawl under the van. It had been five years since he’d done this at the obstacle course during OCS, and a dirt course was a lot kinder to the elbows and belly than concrete. Gravel scraped against his stomach even through the material of his hoodie and T-shirt.

Another three-count, this time longer, and he burst, stumbling, from under the front of the van. Luck was finally on his side—not a thug or henchman in sight. Just the slightly crushed delivery van with the hostages inside.

Chuck opened the side door of the van as silently as he could under the circumstances and closed the door most of the way behind him.

“Moron!” Casey, behind Sarah, who nearest the door, reached for his neck. “I told you to go home!”

“Well, I didn’t hear you, did I?” Chuck, actively shaking now, hurried to fumble with his left pants leg. “Everybody okay?”

“Chuck, get out of here!” Sarah struggled to her feet. “Go home! We’ve got this!”

“You’re tied up in the back of a van, Sarah.”

“And what, you just wanted to join us?” Casey growled.

“Yeah, kinda.” Chuck’s shaking hands finally unearthed their quarry. “Also, rule number nine—never go anywhere without a knife.” He yanked one out of the holster around his ankle.

“Is that mine?” Sarah asked.

“You weren’t using it.”

Sarah gave him _the_ look.

“I’ll buy you a new one.” Chuck grabbed her wrists to steady his own shaking hands before he began to saw at the cable ties. 

“Be caref—” Sarah couldn’t quite hide the flinch.

Chuck stared in horror at the bright line of blood. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, I’m sorry. Sarah, I’m so sorry—”

“Chuck!” Sarah kicked him to get his attention. “Just finish it. It’s okay.”

“But I cut you—you’re bleeding!” Chuck’s head threatened to float away from the rest of his body. He could feel his vision going black around the edges…

“Chuck. _Finish it_.” Sarah’s tone threatened dire things if he dared disobey.

His throat bobbled, but he reached out with his shaking hands and cut the ties. Sarah immediately snatched the knife and cut Casey’s cable tie. He grabbed Chuck by the shoulder, maybe to steady the other man. “Can you walk?”

“I—I—yeah.” Even though it was gross, Chuck spat a mouthful of copper on the floor. “Sorry,” he apologized, mostly to Mei-Ling and Lee. “I’m normally more poli—”

Casey hauled him around. “How many guards?”

“What? Um, three. That I saw.”

“Hm. Maybe you’re not just a useless spook.”

Chuck opened his mouth to protest that counting guards wasn’t _that_ hard, but thought better of it. Instead, he fumbled for his holster again and handed Casey one of the remaining two knives. The last went to Mei-Ling, who had by now been freed. “Sorry they’re not guns—”

Casey eased the door open slightly. “Bartowski’s right—three guards. They’re all looking for him. Heh. One of them’s looking in the trash can.”

Chuck was suddenly very glad he’d decided against hiding there.

Sarah nudged by Chuck to peer out the door. “I can take one down,” she said. “But…”

“I’ll take those odds. Chuck, take Lee, head east.”

“Which way’s that?”

“ _That_ way, numb-nuts.”

Chuck glanced over at his unexpected running mate, who looked as worn as he himself felt at the moment. “Can you run?” he asked.

The other man swayed a bit, but nodded.

“We’ll be fine,” Chuck assured Casey, though he could actively feel the heart-pounding buffer of adrenaline fade into overt exhaustion.

“All right. Count of three—one, two…go!”

Chuck and Lee dropped out of the side door as silently as they could, Casey covering them while Mei-Ling and Sarah stormed out of the back of the van.

Chuck didn’t see what happened next. He was too busy running.

But when he heard the gunshots, he prayed.

**17 OCTOBER 2007**   
**RANDOM ALLEY**   
**20:38 PDT**

“Chuck? Lee?”

The soft whispered, almost hesitant, cut through the sounds of distant traffic, the hum of streetlamps, the all-pressing power and thrum of a city that could be nothing but an agoraphobic’s worst nightmare.

Chuck’s head popped up. He dropped his hands. “Sarah?”

He heard footsteps—and Sarah rounded the corner of the dumpster behind which he and Lee had hidden themselves.

Lee, who’d been sitting quietly beside Chuck, letting the other man freak out in his own way, struggled to his feet. Since Chuck’s Chinese was non-existent and Lee’s English limited, their attempts to talk had been stymied from the get-go. Also, it didn’t help that there might be armed men after them at any second. But the diplomat stood firm now. “Mei-Ling?” he asked.

“She’s fine. She and Casey are back at the accident, waiting for our team to get here. I’m sure she’d like to see you.” Sarah pointed back toward the accident.

Lee nodded, gave Chuck one last uncertain look, and hurried away.

Once he was gone, Sarah crouched down in front of Chuck. “You okay, slugger?”

“You’re right,” Chuck decided. “Nicknames really aren’t your thing.”

“Shut it. Answer the question.”

“Well, which one do you want me to do?” Chuck tried to wiggle his eyebrows, but that turned out to be another Very Bad Idea. He groaned as agony spiked through his head, bloating it even bigger than it had been a minute before. The intense knot of pain on his forehead worsened.

Of course, that sent Sarah into mother hen mode. She pushed his hair back to get a look at his injury.

“S’Fine.” Chuck tried to push her hand away. “Just hit my head on the steering wheel.”

“And bit your tongue, and it looks like you scraped yourself up good.” Sarah smoothed his hair back over the bump. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital and make sure you don’t have a concussion. Can you walk?”

“I’m fine,” Chuck insisted, but when he tried to climb to his feet, he let out a groan. “Okay, maybe not so much fine as conscious. But it’s okay—”

“Let me give you a hand.” Sarah reached down to lever an arm under him.

Chuck grabbed her forearm. She’d apparently taken time to apply field medicine—a black strip of cloth was tied around her wrist—but it hadn’t been wholly effective. Chuck watched a thick stream of red dribble from her wrist and down her hand. A couple of drops plopped heavily on his jeans.

“Is that—is that…blood?” Chuck demanded, his voice going up an octave. His head began to spin. The world stuttered.

“Whoa.” Sarah lunged forward to catch his head before it could thud against the brick wall and add another goose-egg to his collection. “Chuck, stay with me—”

“Sorry,” Chuck managed before he passed out.

**17 OCTOBER 2007**   
**MADISON MERCY HOSPITAL**   
**21:45 PDT**

“Wow, bro, you really weren’t kidding when you said you weren’t going anywhere.” Devon put down Chuck’s medical chart on the counter and folded his arms, his eyebrows high. “Like, literally. Two nights in the hospital in a row, dude. Not awesome.”

“You’re not kidding.” Chuck closed his eyes, mostly to block out the fluorescent lights overhead. He lay on his back on the examining table, but not out of any sense of exhaustion. Ellie had threatened him with many forms of death if he moved even an inch before she got back. He might have spent the evening fighting off Triad, but even they paled in comparison to the great wrath of Ellie F. Bartowski. Especially an Ellie whose brother had been in a car accident—at least that part of the story he and Sarah had concocted in the emergency room was real.

Ellie had vanished into the belly of the hospital to check on other patients, but Devon had clearly been sent inside to babysit in her absence. He was the third doctor Chuck had seen, aside from his own doctor and Ellie.

“You might as well sit down,” Chuck told Devon. “Either of us leaves, we’re dead meat. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been up to? We didn’t get much of a chance to catch up last night. What’s new in the life of the awesome heart surgeon?”

Before Devon could fill him in, the door opened. Both men straightened, expecting Ellie. But it was a blonde head that poked into the room. Her eyes cut from Chuck to Devon in surprise.

“Sarah! Hey!” Devon looked genuinely happy to see his girlfriend’s roommate. “Heard you landed a job with the Chuckster here! Awesome.”

He held up a hand. It took Sarah a moment to catch on, but she gave him the desired high five.

Which let Devon see the makeshift bandage on her wrist. “Whoa, Sarah. What happened?”

“Oh, nothing.” Sarah tried to pull her wrist behind her back, but Devon was having none of that. He kept a gentle hold on her arm. “Really, I promise, it’s nothing. I bandaged it up already—”

Chuck scooted over on the exam table to make room for Sarah when Devon led her across the room. She gave Chuck a distressed look as she sat.

“It’s really nothing,” she said again, but Devon made quick work of unwrapping the bandage.

“Ouch,” Devon declared. “This looks…”

“I slipped while chopping something,” Sarah lied as guilt wracked through Chuck’s body. He couldn’t look away from the wound, which looked like a gaping chasm on her otherwise perfect wrist. He’d done that. Not some Triad hench-thug. Sarah would have made it through the night without injury if he’d just manned up.

“Really,” Sarah went on. “I’ve done worse shaving my legs. It’s really not a big deal.”

“Needs stitches.”

“What?” both Chuck and Sarah asked.

“Needs to be cleaned out, too. Don’t want to risk infection—it’ll keep the scarring minimal. Though a few scars can’t hurt. Right, bro?”

Chuck returned the high-five by instinct, even though the thought of something he’d done causing a scar on Sarah made him want to throw up.

Devon set in to work on Sarah’s wrist as he told them about a fantastic scar he’d received on a white water rafting trip the year before. “Class five rapids, dude, staring death in the eyeball. Hey, you should come next time. Get the blood pumping, exorcise some of those demons.”

“Sounds fun,” Chuck said, ignoring the slight case of nausea just the thought of white water rapids had always given him.

Ellie came in just as Devon finished sewing up Sarah’s wrist. “Oh, my God, Sarah! What happened?”

“Chopping accident. I told Devon it was fine, but he insisted.”

Devon patted Sarah on the knee as he pushed the rolling chair away, a brotherly action. “Hippocratic oath. Hey, babe, I double-checked the Chuckster here, and he’s good to go. Regular painkillers, you hear?” The last was directed at Chuck.

“You’d think knowing two doctors would get me access to the good stuff,” Chuck griped.

“So are we free to go?” Devon finished.

“Just one thing first.” Ellie wrapped Chuck in a very careful hug. “You haven’t even been back two days and you’ve already been in a car accident. I’m worried, little brother.”

“Just a fender bender,” Chuck tried to assure her. “And I’m going straight home and icing my tongue with ice cream, I promise. I’ll take it easy.”

“Healthy,” Ellie said, but she smiled. “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride since you already wrecked your new car, apparently.”

Chuck had seen Sarah’s “we need to talk face” as she’d come into the exam room, though. “Actually, why don’t you give me a ride, Sarah? We can talk about your interview and Devon and Ellie can head straight home. You guys worked doubles today, you’ve got to be exhausted.”

He could see the battle taking place behind Ellie’s eyes, but the weariness won out over the protectiveness. “All right,” she agreed. “But dinner—Friday.”

“Deal.”

“Sarah, you’re of course welcome, too,” Ellie said. “We can celebrate your new job…working for my brother.”

“Just stay away from knives,” Devon told Sarah.

Chuck couldn’t hold back the nervous laugh at that.

Later, in Sarah’s Jeep, he let his aching head rest back against the seat. “Sorry I passed out on you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time something I did knocked you out.” Sarah’s smile was humorless as she focused on the road. “How’s your head?”

“Feels like the football that made the field goal, thanks.” 

“While you were getting tended to, Casey and I reported in to Beckman and Graham. We neutralized Ben Lo Pan, Mei-Ling will go with the Marshals, and Lee is heading back to China tomorrow.”

“A success, then,” Chuck said. It made the scrapes on his palms, elbows, stomach, and knees throb somewhat less.

“And when you get back, I will personally be training you on how to tail somebody.” Sarah’s voice was lined with steel. Annoyed steel. “I was going to kill you myself if you survived the accident. They made you before we even left the neighborhood. God, Chuck.”

Chuck ignored the annoyance. “Get back?” he said. “I can’t leave! That was part of the deal!”

“Relax, you’re not going anywhere. You’re just on medical leave for forty-eight hours. Nobody’s sure what the concussion you had will do to the Intersect, and they’re afraid to try.” Sarah made the turn into the parking lot of Chuck’s building. “Obey Ellie’s orders, get plenty of rest, and stay out of the office for a couple of days, okay?”

Chuck blinked. Just like that, forty-eight hours of sick leave. It was like a miracle. “Okay. Thanks for the ride. I’m glad we all survived tonight.”

“Me too. Oh, and one more thing.” Sarah reached past him into the glove box and drew out a small object. She smacked it into his palm, making the scrapes sing with agony. “Your new pocketknife so that you don’t break ‘rule number nine.’ Touch any of my knives again, and I’ll use them to cut off your fingers one by one. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Chuck took the brave route—he high-tailed it from the Jeep.

**18 OCTOBER 2007**   
**BURBANK BUY MORE**   
**10:08 PDT**

He told himself that he was standing outside the store only because he needed a moment—to enjoy the southern California warmth. That was all. It wasn’t the fear of people that would be appliance shopping one of the biggest, airiest places in Burbank. It wasn’t the fear of seeing his best friend again and not having a good explanation for dropping off the face of the earth for five years. It wasn’t fear of seeing just one more thing that had changed in the world when he…hadn’t.

Oh, who the hell was he kidding?

Chuck took a deep breath. It did nothing but remind him that his entire body had been used as a punching bag by Chinese henchmen with crazy driving tactics the night before.

“Hey, buddy, you coming inside or what?” The green-shirt working security at the door finally ventured outside. “I promise nothing in there’s gonna bite.”

“Th-thanks.” Chuck mustered up a smile, but it felt like more of a grimace. “Sorry, got distracted.”

“No problem. Happens to the best of us.”

Chuck sucked in another deep breath—a mistake, again—and took his first step back into the Buy More. “You’re a good man,” he said, and spotted the green-shirt’s name-tag, “Fernando.” 

Fernando gave him a smile most people kept on hand for the crazy hobbit-like individuals on street corners. Chuck didn’t blame him. If a sweat-covered stranger in a do-rag had come into the store when he’d worked there between semesters all those years ago, his reaction would have mirrored Fernando’s. He turned, prepared to write it off as another common problem in his new life, but to his surprise, the green-shirt grabbed his arm.

Chuck recoiled, arms flailing.

“Whoa, sorry, dude,” Fernando said, holding his hands up as a gesture of peace. “Didn’t mean to startle you—but you’re him, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“You’re Chuck Bartowski. You’re THE Bartowski!” Fernando’s excitement grew with every word. As Chuck stared at him in something akin to horror, the green-shirt waved frantically at a desk in the center of the store. A desk Chuck remembered well—the Nerd Herd desk. “I can’t believe you’re real!”

“Um…” Chuck eyed the exit. “Maybe I should come back some other time?”

“Are you Chuck Bartowski or not?” Fernando demanded, sidling his mass sideways so that he stood between Chuck and escape.

“I am, but I’m also a little freaked out. Do I know you? Have we met?”

“I can’t believe it. Dude, you’re a _god_! C’mon, check this out.” Fernando jerked his head, indicating that Chuck should follow him. “I just can’t believe I’m standing in the presence of The One. Forget god, man, you’re a _legend_.”

A god and a legend? What the…? Sure, Chuck had spent summers at the Buy More, but he didn’t think a stockboy usually left such a mark on a place like this. Certainly, it wasn’t reason enough for Fernando to treat him like a celebrity.

He eyed the door again. He could go, escape out into the warm sunshine, find some other place to meet up with Morgan. He could get his new computer at the Large Mart, even. They sold computers there.

But curiosity warred with paranoia. The chances that Fernando was a spy that had somehow managed to break through fifty levels of clearance and find out that he was the Intersect—extremely minimal. By all likelihood, it wasn’t a trap. And hell, this was a Buy More. What on earth could possibly happen to him in a Buy More?

So he followed Fernando into the open bay of the store, with its cloying overabundance of _space_ , its cheerful colors, and shelf upon shelf of nerd heaven. He might have been able to handle it with some semblance of dignity or class, but as they walked through the store, strange things began to happen. Green-shirts left customers behind to the line the main aisle. Some peered furtively at him, some outright stared, others whispered to their neighbors behind cupped hands. Chuck felt spiders of the “truly freaked out” variety begin to crawl all over his flesh. He hunched his shoulders, cast his eyes to the far-far-far away ceiling, and began to mutter Klingon prayers under his breath.

The silent nerd parade continued. Beaming, Fernando led him into a hallway that read “Employees Only.” They passed yellow and green inspirational posters with nerd insults scrawled along the bottom.

Though Chuck was at the height of the freaking out scale, some part of him couldn’t help but appreciate the witty irony in the one about “yo mamma” and an Ewok.

The Tour of Creepy ended at the Buy More break room, a place Chuck remembered well. It had been the site of Morgan’s breaking One-Toed Ted’s Fluffy Bunny record in July of 2001.

Fernando held up a hand to signal a pause before they entered. Chuck sneaked a look over his shoulder; every green-shirt in the store stood fifty or so feet away, silently and somberly watching him.

He figured out what “beyond freaked out” meant in that moment.

Fernando, hand still held up, pushed open the break room door. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced in a voice full of pomp and circumstance, “may I present one Chuck Bartowski, returning to our fold?”

And with his free hand, he yanked Chuck into the room.

Chuck stumbled over Fernando’s foot, so his first view of the Buy More break room was a blur of white, brown, yellow, and green. He took in details quickly—tables with green-shirts and white-shirted Nerd Herd members alike, a wall of lockers, and…

“What the hell?!”

It was him. A cardboard cutout of him, Charles Bartowski, arms crossed over a green Buy More polo. He was smiling, an actual innocent smile, and his hair was as long and as unruly as it had been during his Stanford days. That in itself was creepy enough, but what made everything worse was the wall behind the cutout. Framed pictures of him from toddler-hood on, sometimes smiling at the camera, sometimes completely unaware that there was a camera at all. A framed copy of an old receipt—his Sega Genesis from elementary school. That horrible picture from his junior high school yearbook. A handwritten IOU he’d given to Morgan after he’d accidentally broken his Super Mario Brothers game meant for the NES.

He still owed Morgan that game, come to think of it.

Before he could truly wrap his aching head around the concept of a stalker wall, every other person in the room had surged to his or her feet. “Chuck Bartowski!” 

Chuck turned, dread turning to outright horror. One of the tables held all of the Nerd Herd, almost glowing with geekiness in their bright shirts and silvery ties. They’d risen to their feet with the rest of the room, but unlike the confused look present on every face, they looked awed, almost reverent. Chuck’s stomach tilted a bit as he recognized Creepy Jeff from his stock-boy days, looking boozier and more disheveled than ever.

Even he’d changed in the five years away. Sure, it was only to change from a green shirt to a white shirt, but the fact that even Creepy Jeff could change hit Chuck like a sock to the gut.

A short woman who’d taken a few liberties with the Buy More dress code stepped forward. “Morgan is never going to believe this,” she told him. “Can I have your autograph?”

“Um,” was all Chuck could think to say to that.

Behind the woman, money exchanged hands—Creepy Jeff’s creepy companion was paying off Creepy Jeff. “Damn it,” the little dude muttered as he forked over a dollar. “I should never bet against you.” He glared sourly at Chuck. “Thanks for not being dead, dude. You cost me a dollar!”

Sorry to ruin your day by not ending my life,” Chuck told him.

“Just don’t let it happen again.”

“Noted.” Chuck rolled his eyes and nearly jumped a foot out of his own skin when he realized that his paranoia was no longer for naught—the Buy Morians had surrounded him completely, a pack of moths being drawn to the flame that was Chuck Bartowski. “Um, guys, I gotta tell you, this is a little weird for me. I really just came here to buy a computer and to see my buddy. Maybe you know him? Morgan Grimes?”

 _Please_ , he thought desperately, searching for an escape route through the crowds of nerds and salespeople. _Please let me survive. Please don’t let me die in a Buy More—_

“Chuck?”

And just like that, the herd of nerds parted, forming an immaculate aisle from Chuck to the break room door. Chuck saw a flash of green, a flash of beard, and suddenly the world stopped closing in on him. “Hi, buddy,” he said, straightening.

Morgan Grimes simply stood, frozen, a Large Mart deli bag in one hand. Time stretched to an eternity and back again, so long that Chuck nearly began to fidget and hyperventilate—

With a wordless cry of joy and ecstasy, Morgan launched himself at Chuck, latching onto his best friend’s middle and clinging for dear life. Chuck told himself that the man was just glad to see him. The fact that Morgan’s shoulders had begun to shake was probably just happiness, not the tears he suspected. He hoped.

“Finally,” Chuck heard Morgan murmur against his shirt. “Finally, all is right in the world.”


	11. Morgan and the Ninja

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it’s the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friend. — _Ralph Waldo Emerson_

**18 OCTOBER 2007**   
**BURBANK BUY MORE  
10:40 PDT**

“And just like that, they let you come back?”

“Well, yeah, sort of.” Chuck tucked his hands into his pockets as he strolled past the beastmasters in the home appliance section. They’d already made a few laps around the Buy More since the break room had frankly been too full of people staring at the famous Chuck Bartowski and Morgan’s shrine to him for Chuck to be comfortable. He was only marginally more comfortable in the airy store, but it sure beat staring at his second grade class picture. He focused on Morgan now. “I’m contracted to write some code for some local virus protection companies, and the threat’s over with now, so they didn’t have a problem with me moving back to Burbank. The Marshals even helped me set up my new office. They didn’t even care when I crashed one of their trucks.” He waved at the bandanna-covered goose-egg on his forehead.

“Man, that’s so cool.” Morgan waved his hands in the air happily. Very little had changed about his friend in five years, Chuck had been relieved to see. He’d cropped his hair short, to almost a military cut, but the beard lived on, as did the crazy shoes. “The only way you could get any cooler is if you turned out to be a secret agent or something. But witness protection works. Raw deal, though, witnessing a mob hit on your first night on the job out east.”

Chuck felt a greasy film coat his stomach at the lie. “Yeah. The Marshals wouldn’t let me contact anybody, so I’m sorry, buddy.”

He hated lying to Morgan. He hated lying to the guy who had had his back at every disaster from the age of six to the age of twenty-two. But Ellie (and by extension Devon) had known that he had left California to work for the government. He hadn’t even been allowed to tell Morgan that much. 

So witness protection it was.

“Lucky break,” Morgan went on as they made a lap through the DVD aisles, “that the guy who wanted you dead got offed.”

“Concrete shoes,” Chuck said solemnly.

“So cliché.” Morgan shook his head. “You’d think they’d find newer and more creative ways to go about these things. Although the classics…they’re classics for a reason.”

“You’re thinking of the piranha tank, aren’t you?” Chuck accused.

“Nothing more demoralizing than being eaten to death by tiny fishes,” Morgan said, nodding sagely. “What was your new identity, anyway? Something cool like Chase Headroom or Charles Rambo?”

“Pete,” Chuck said. “Pete Rogers.”

“Well, that’s inconspicuous.” Morgan wrinkled his nose as they made a left into the video gaming section, an old standby. “You should’ve requested something like…Derek Calrissian. Or Drake Mallard.”

“Wasn’t my choice, buddy.”

“Oh, well. Either way—now that you’re back, Halo tournament, my place, dude. Tonight. You, me, all the grape soda we can drink, it’s going to be _epic_.”

Chuck flinched. “No can do, I’m afraid. I’ve got plans tonight.”

“No big deal. Tomorrow night, then. It’s on.”

“Ooh, buddy, I really can’t. Dinner at Ellie’s.”

Morgan looked so depressed that Chuck scrambled to make up for it. “But Saturday night,” he said, holding up a hand. “Saturday night, I am all yours.” Barring a major national emergency, of course. 

“Fantastic! I’ll get your old controller out of storage, get it polished, cleaned up for you.”

Chuck had to laugh. “That would be great,” he said, meaning every word. “But enough about me. I’ve been living the world’s most boring life for the last five years. I want to hear all about you, little buddy. You seem to be secretly running the Buy More.”

“More than secretly running.” Morgan leaned in close, lowering his voice as he did so. “One of the other guys just got promoted to Assistant Manager, and he’s a real tool. You probably remember him. Harry Tang.”

Immediately, Chuck groaned. “He’s still here, too?!”

“Don’t worry, man. Buy Moria stands up for its own.” Morgan put his fist over his heart, looking as somber and severe as a Marine in full dress uniform. “We’re staging a revolt, man. Next week, Harry Tang…is…going…down.”

“Call me when that happens. I’ll bring popcorn.”

“Popcorn? Hell, bring your paintball gun.”

Chuck chose to take Sarah’s usual approach of reply to that one. “Um, okay. But what else have you been up to? Buy More days, nights with your lady friend?”

“As if.” Morgan snorted. “I’ve got my dream job, man.”

Chuck squinted. “Taste-testing for Baskin Robbins?”

“No, no, no, nothing like that.” Morgan grabbed a microphone from a shelf as they passed, and tossed it from hand to hand. “I’m a DJ, man. DJ Starr Killer, with two Rs instead of one. Also, it’s two words.”

Chuck tilted his head. “Your DJ name is…”

“Uber-geeky, I know, but what can I say? The babes love it.” Morgan drew a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and smiled winningly. “I’m DJing next weekend, you should totally come. I’ll throw some Coulton on for you, it’ll be fantastic.”

Though he could think of nothing better than seeing DJ Starr Killer in action, Chuck knew better than to think he could handle being in such a large, dark space with so many people around. “I don’t know, man. Maybe sometime soon, though?” After he beat this debilitating curse the government had laid on his doorstep by shoving him away from society for five years.

“All right. Soon. But I am so glad to have you back!” Morgan went in for another impromptu hug, bouncing around like a sugar-hyped toddler before he reverted back to the DJ Starr Killer mode. “And Saturday, let the ownage begin.”

“Right. But in the meantime, I kind of need a computer.”

“Well, you came to the right place, buddy.” Morgan grabbed Chuck’s arm to steer him into the computer aisles, discreetly waving off another approaching green-shirt as he did so. Chuck had noticed him doing that a few times during their stroll. He didn’t know if it was Morgan just wanting Chuck all for himself, or if Morgan had picked up on the fact that public places made him a little twitchy.

Knowing Morgan, it was probably a little of both.

“So what are you looking for, exactly?” Morgan asked.

Chuck told him. And Morgan’s eyes lit up with glee. “Oh. Oh, we can do that. We can definitely do that. Right this way, my friend.”

**18 OCTOBER 2007**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**13:22 PDT**

It took him three trips to haul his new loot inside. The trips themselves took only about five minutes—walk to the car, retrieve the bags, walk back to the elevator and to the fourth-story apartment. Simple. Easy.

Still, the task took well over an hour. Chuck spent most of that hour standing in his own apartment doorway, staring out into the world and wondering if it had always been that huge and daunting. Had he just never noticed? So much possibility seemed to exist in every cubic foot of space. But possibility was also a double-edged sword—positive and negative by turns. Possibility went hand in hand with disaster.

And a _lot_ of disaster could occur in all that forsaken open air.

The first trip was okay. He forced himself not to flee upstairs and hide beneath the covers as he would have liked. And so what if he took a minute in the doorway to steady himself before setting out? A guy had to breathe, didn’t he?

Fifteen minutes to talk himself into the second trip, thirty-five for the third. By the time he returned from his car on the final excursion, he was dripping sweat and openly trembling.

“God, Bartowski, you’re pathetic,” he told himself in Casey’s voice as he hauled the last of his supplies up the stairs. “Too damned scared to even go to your car in the middle of a parking lot in freaking broad daylight. Moron. Coward. Idiot.”

“You know, that’s my friend you’re insulting.”

Sarah’s voice from the doorway made Chuck whirl—and nearly fall down the stairs and break his neck for his trouble. He fumbled and caught himself, wincing when he jarred his scraped palms. “Ow— _ouch_! What are you doing here?”

Apparently she’d opened the front door silently—or he’d left it open. Now, she held up a sack. “Lunch. And what are you doing? You’re supposed to be resting.”

“Ah, Mother Hen Sarah. I’ve missed you.” Chuck turned and trudged up the final two steps. “Why don’t you come up? It’s not restful for me to keep climbing these gorram stairs all day.”

She made no reply. Chuck shrugged to himself and dumped the rest of the bags on the bed, trying to ignore his pounding heart. Between the trips outside and Sarah’s startling him, that poor over-abused organ was clocking way too much overtime.

When he turned, Sarah mounted the last step.

“Gah!” Chuck jumped a foot and a half and thumped on his chest to get his heart started again. She hadn’t made a noise on the staircase. “I’m getting you a collar with bells on it!”

“Wouldn’t do anything. I can move just as silently with bells on.” Sarah studied him and then the heaping piles of bags all around the room. Her eyes lingered on the huge box on the desk, and the fact that his government-issued computer now sat in the corner. “You’re supposed to be resting,” she said, looking at him again. “Not buying out…the Buy More?”

Chuck shrugged. “I needed stuff.”

“And that meant purchasing everything but the kitchen sink?”

“Oh, no, I got that, too. It’s still out in the car.”

Sarah blinked at his newest acquisition leaning up against the wall. “You got a white board? What for?”

“Tic-tac-toe tournaments.”

Sarah sighed at him.

“It’s the Bryce Board,” Chuck admitted. “Sorry. I’m grouchy—there’s just too much…space.”

“Ah. Rough day?”

“No. Just…saturation point, you know?” And his room was too open, too wide, too vast, too…much. He’d rather go down into the windowless bathroom downstairs, but he knew Sarah wouldn’t stand for that.

“Here.” Sarah flicked a switch by the sliding door that he hadn’t had time to notice. Blinds lowered over all of the windows and across the sliding glass door, pitching the room into dimness. “Better?”

Oxygen rushed back into the room. The knot tying Chuck’s shoulders to each other vanished. He nearly collapsed to the floor, but settled on nodding. “Much. Thank you.”

“Probably should have mentioned the switch yesterday, so I’m sorry about that.” He could barely make out Sarah’s frown in the dark. “Chuck, promise me something. Promise me you won’t leave the blinds on all the time. I know you’ll need them sometimes, but…”

“I won’t wallow in the darkness all day,” Chuck said. Though the idea was tempting beyond words. “I want to get better, too.”

“Just remember: one thing at a time, all right?”

“One thing at a time,” Chuck echoed.

“Now tell me why you have a Bryce Board.” 

Chuck sat on the edge of his bed and watched her take a seat in the desk chair, a safe distance away. “You know how detectives on the TV shows have murder boards? This is my ‘Where’s Bryce?’ board. I need to set up a timeline that I can look at, and assemble all of my clues. I plan to store the board in the closet, and I’ll use code-phrases.”

“You can do all of this at Castle, you know.”

“And rub Casey’s face in the fact that his men let Bryce get away? The guy hates me enough already.”

“He doesn’t hate you.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree.” 

“And I have to ask—what on earth is that?” Sarah nudged the box taking up most of his desk, her eyebrows high.

“My new computer.” 

“Chuck, you already have a computer.”

“With thirteen different ways for the government to track my activities already pre-installed. Pass.”

“You found them already? You were supposed to be resting.”

Chuck moved a shoulder. “I _was_ resting. Computer work is relaxing to me.”

“Nerd.” She smiled.

“Undeniably. I purchased this one with my own money, for my own personal use. I’ll view any attempt to hack it, put a tracking program in it, or alter it in any way an invasion of my privacy.”

Sarah sighed. “You do know they’ll just order me to do it anyway.”

“Yeah. It’ll be like a game of Spy Versus Spy. You put as many tracking programs as you like on it, I’ll take them off, and if you can best me, I’ll stop playing this character on the online game, Sunlight Chronicles.” Chuck pulled out his new phone and thumbed through the pictures until he found the one he sought. He handed the phone over.

Sarah wrinkled her nose at the ugly avatar on the screen. “What on earth is that?”

“The evil daughter of a vampire and a gnome, with a few elvish relatives somewhere on the family tree.” Chuck smiled. “I named her Schnookie McSarahkins.”

“This is supposed to be me?”

“In theory.”

“It looks nothing like me.”

“I know. But in the back of your head, there will always be that teeny-tiny reminder that somewhere on an online video game, there is a horribly-named cross-breed running around making stupid decisions with your name on her.” Chuck smiled. “I do believe I’ve just insulted you in nerd.”

“Even though it’s completely ridiculous that there would be a video game character anywhere based on me,” Sarah said, rising to her feet so that she could return the phone, “I’ll tell you what you can do with your nerd insults.”

She set the phone on the bed next to him and leaned in close, provocatively. Chuck’s mind stuttered and simply went blank.

“A Bacta Tank?” Sarah said. “That’s the tank they dumped Luke Skywalker in to heal after he nearly froze to death on Hoth.”

He was so distracted by how clean she smelled, and how wonderful, that it took him a minute to process the words. And when he did, something fluttered very low in his belly. He swallowed, hard. “Did you actually watch the movie, or did you just look that up on Wikipedia?”

For one thrumming moment, she stayed exactly where she was, leaning over him, her face close to his, her eyes on his, unreadable and yet somehow still playful. And then, finally, an impish smile broke through. “Not telling.”

Chuck opened his mouth to answer (though what he would have said, he had no earthly idea, as his mind was still blissfully blank), but a buzzing noise cut through the apartment. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Sensor alarm.” Sarah took off toward the stairs.

Chuck liked to think hat for a tall guy, he could move pretty quickly, but Sarah was halfway down the stairs before he even reached the top. He hurried after her, his aching body and their time-stopping moment in the bedroom forgotten.

Sarah crossed the room in two strides and yanked the bottom drawer out from the desk. Then the top drawer, in quick succession. She tapped the space bar on the keyboard—

A panel slid away, revealing a wall of monitors.

“Now that is just _cool_ ,” Chuck breathed, staring in wonder at the screens.

“Shh.” Sarah scanned the rows of monitors and swore under her breath. She stabbed at the keyboard, cutting the feeds entirely. She keyed in a sequence on the keypad and a panel on the floor slid away, revealing her preferred silver gun. “Stay here, Chuck.”

But Chuck had seen what she had been trying to hide from him. “Sarah,” he said in a too-calm voice, “why would there be a ninja in my sister’s apartment?”

“I don’t know. Stay here.” 

“Nope.” Chuck was already following her out the door. “My sister—”

“Is at work. And I’m not bringing you anywhere near danger if I can help it.”

Another alarm, this time a beep, rang out from the monitor wall. Sarah doubled-back, expertly side-stepping around Chuck. She brought the feeds back up online—and swore again.

“Now I’m coming,” Chuck said, already running for the door. “And later, we can talk about the fact that there’s a ninja, and my sister, in her apartment!”

“Can’t wait,” Sarah said drily as they pounded across the courtyard, running by mutual and silent agreement for her Jeep.

 **18 OCTOBER 2007**  
 **CHEZ** **BARTOWSKI/WALKER**  
 **13:41 PDT**

Chuck was already stumbling out of the Jeep before it had fully stopped moving. He sprinted through the familiar front gates, down the path, hurtling bushes and ducking through the side corridor. It was faster that way. He rounded the trash cans, racing out into the open courtyard—

Only to have Sarah beat him to the door by a full two paces. “Go inside, find Ellie, and get her out of here,” she hissed at him. “Take her back to your place if you have to.”

She sneaked away toward what had once been called the Morgan Door.

Chuck took a deep breath and knocked. Time was, he wouldn’t have had to knock on that door—this place had been part-his—but now…

It was probably less than a minute, but it felt like eons before Ellie opened the door. “Oh, you’re safe,” Chuck said without thinking, and immediately yanked her into a relieved hug.

“Chuck?” Ellie’s voice sounded muffled against his chest. “What’s going on?”

Chuck, realizing his faux pas, almost leaped backward. “Wh-what? Nothing. Nothing’s going on. I, ah, I just missed you, that’s all.”

Ellie squinted at him. “Did you hit your head again? Why are you all sweaty and out of breath? Did you have another episode?”

“N-no. I’m just really, really, ah, relieved to be back in Burbank. I ran all the way here. Get the blood flowing, the heart pumping, you know?”

“Geez, Chuck. The doctor said you need to rest! You were in a car accident just last night!”

Chuck attempted to apply a winning smile, but it came out a bit manic, and forced. “What are you doing right now?” he asked, hoping to change the subject. “You maybe up for a little brother sister time? We could, you know, catch a movie, I could maybe show you my place?”

“Right now?” Ellie blinked at him. “I just got off a hellish day at work. We’re the closest hospital to that hotel that was bombed a couple of weeks ago, and we’re only just now starting to catch up to the workload. All I really want to do right now is sleep for two weeks solid.”

“Oh. Um, coffee! Coffee’s good when you’re tired, right? Why don’t we go get some? Together? Outside the house?”

Again, Ellie squinted. Her arms crossed, her face took on that mutinous set that Chuck remembered well from their childhood together. It gave him a pang to see it now. “Why are you so dead-set on getting me out of the house?”

“No reason, really.” Chuck felt sweat slide down the track between his shoulder-blades. “I just—I missed you so much, Ellie, and I feel really bad…”

“Come inside.” Ellie grabbed his wrist, giving him no choice but to be led to the couch. With a ninja—and Sarah—somewhere in the apartment. “Chuck, there’s no magical pill we can take here. It’s not going to be miraculously okay overnight, all right? You understand that, don’t you?”

“I know that, I do. It’s just…”

“Just what, Chuck?”

Despite the ever present danger, issues floated to the top of his mind. Everybody else had gotten to live for five years, while he’d been stuck underground. Everything was changed or different, and nothing was the way it was supposed to be. He couldn’t go outside without sweating through his shirt. He had something in his head that he didn’t understand, much less trust, something that made him both an asset and a liability to a trigger-happy government that could throw him underground at whim to rot away the rest of his life.

Oh, and there was a ninja in Sarah’s bedroom.

“I just didn’t think it would be this difficult,” he lied.

“Life is rough, Chuck.” Ellie’s voice was surprisingly harsh, making Chuck slant an alarmed look at her.

“Oh, believe me, I know that,” he said. Where was the ninja? Why weren’t they all dead? Had Sarah beaten it?

Could Sarah Walker really take out a ninja?

“You’re probably just feeling overwhelmed because your head hurts,” Ellie said. “Let me take a look.”

Just as Ellie reached for the bandanna, a loud thud from the direction of the bedrooms made both siblings look over.

“That’s weird. I thought Sarah said she’d be gone all day.” Ellie rose to her feet to check.

Chuck grabbed her arm before she could. “Why don’t I? You stay here.”

“Chuck—”

“Please, stay there. Please.”

Sarah was going to murder him, Chuck thought as he walked through his own old hallway like a man traipsing through a minefield. If she bested the ninja, Chuck would definitely be her next victim. Still, it beat Ellie catching on or getting killed in case Sarah hadn’t neutralized the ninja problem.

Chuck’s stomach plummeted at the thought.

He knocked on his old bedroom door. “Hello?”

No answer. Wait—another thud.

Oh crap.

Since Ellie stood at the hallway entrance, arms crossed, he didn’t have much of a choice. “I’m coming in there,” he called through the door, and prayed to any random deity listening in that he might survive the next few minutes.

Before he could grab the doorknob, however, it twisted on its own. The door opened, revealing a panting and sweaty Sarah. “Chuck?” she asked, feigning surprise for Ellie’s sake even as her eyes promised a severe and prolonged death scene in Chuck’s near future. “What are you doing here? You told me not to come in until Monday!”

“Everything okay in here?” Chuck said in a too-loud voice. He flared his eyes at Sarah, trying to communicate that he hadn’t exactly had a choice short of outright kidnapping his own sister and hauling her bodily away across the courtyard. Even then, he knew she wouldn’t have come peacefully, so he would have had to knock her out to do it, and he still had yet to convince Sarah to teach him the Acropolis Cold-Clock, as he’d begun calling it. “We heard thudding.”

“What? Oh, yeah. Just moving some furniture.” Sarah peered around the corner, hastily swiping blood away from her nose before Ellie could see it. “Hey, El. You got off early?”

“Another doctor owed me, so he covered the last couple of hours of my shift. Chuck, why don’t you help your new employee with that furniture? I’m going to go take a shower and put on some real clothes.”

Ellie disappeared into her own room. The instant she stepped out of sight, Sarah grabbed a handful of Chuck’s shirt and yanked. He yelped.

The “furniture” turned out to be the ninja, unsurprisingly. Only the ninja had lost some attire in the fight. She was also a striking redhead, model-pretty—save for the bloody nose that matched Sarah’s perfectly. She held the ninja mask in one hand and sat on the windowsill, glaring at Sarah and Chuck in turn.

Chuck almost heard music crescendo as the flash smacked him.

A geyser exploding.

A blue, white, and yellow flag, cross-fading into a passport that read MERCORSUR REPUBLICA ARGENTINA. A map of Argentina.

A passport photo of the ninja herself, but the name read Maria Elena Alberdi. 

DEA AGENT: REDACTED.

A shot of cocaine being boiled on a spoon, a syringe.

Another photo of the ninja, looking almost fetching in pink.

A geyser again. 

The usual micro-migraine kicked in, threatening a full-blown headache since he still hadn’t completely recovered from the previous evening’s festivities. “Ow,” Chuck managed, and wished that his head would kindly quit splitting down the middle.

“Chuck, this is Carina. Carina, a member of my new team—Chuck.” Sarah looked less than thrilled to be making introductions at all, judging by the way that her arms were crossed, and the stony set of her features. 

Chuck knew that on first introductions, a handshake or a pithy comment to break the ice was only polite. But he didn’t move away from the door. All he could do was stare at first the outfit and then the bloody nose. At least he didn’t seem to be in any danger of passing out at the sight of blood. “Why are you dressed like a ninja?” he asked, his voice distant.

“Because somebody won’t give me a damn diamond!” Carina glared at Sarah as she said this.

Chuck stared between the two women—annoyed, live-wire Carina, Sarah’s icy fury countering perfectly. “Um, how is it you two know each other?”

“We’re supposed to be partners,” Carina said, more for Sarah’s benefit.

Chuck, meanwhile, heard “partner” and “diamond,” and his brain made an unwitting connection. “Wait a second,” he said, and turned to Sarah. “You’re gay?”

“What?” both Carina and Sarah said. Sarah realized his implications first—and smacked him hard, just below the shoulder. “Not partners like that! Carina and I teamed up last week to deprive a drug lord of a diamond. Jerk.”

“Oh.” What had his life come to, Chuck wondered, when multimillion dollar capers caused less of a surprise than sexual orientation in southern California? “Sorry. I hit my head last night and it’s making me say crazy things. And—hey, Casey. Welcome to the party. How’s it going?”

Casey, his gun cradled close to his body, stared at the three of them in the room from outside. “What the hell is going on here?” He drew up short when he saw Carina, a scowl settling stonelike over his face. “Oh. You.”

“Agent Casey,” Carina said, her voice becoming a purr. “Been awhile. Prague was the last time we saw each other, wasn’t it?”

Casey gave her a look most people reserved for the dentist. 

“Casey, get Chuck out of here.” Sarah gave Chuck a brief look of her own. He couldn’t tell if her annoyance was at him, or with Carina, but he figured it was probably the latter. After all, he hadn’t been the one to bloody up her nose. “I’ll fill you both in later.”

“But Ellie—”

“Will be fine. Carina’s no threat to her, right?” Sarah glared at Carina.

“What, like I’m going to start going around torturing civilians for the fun of it?” Carina looked bored. “I’m here for my diamond. That’s all.”

Still, Casey had to bodily haul Chuck from room. He went silently only because Sarah’s parting glare promised retribution otherwise, but the moment he and Casey were out of earshot, he wrenched free. “Casey, I flashed on her, on Carina. She’s DEA, but not anymore—”

“I know.” Casey muttered something under his breath.

Chuck still caught a few choice words. “Prague?” he echoed. “What happened in Prague?”

Casey’s glare was even scarier than Sarah’s.

“Guess I don’t need to know.”

They climbed into the Crown Vic, parked back behind the apartment complex rather than out on the street. Chuck kept glancing worriedly back toward Ellie’s place. “Where are we going? Castle?”

“No, I’m taking you home, and then it looks like I’m babysitting your ass until Walker’s done playing patty-cake with the DEA.”

“Ex-DEA. And I’m a grown man, Casey. I don’t need babysitting.”

“I leave you alone for a few hours and suddenly you’re in an apartment with Walker and an armed, masked intruder. I’m keeping an eye on you from here on out.” Casey scowled at the traffic up ahead, but didn’t attempt to muscle his way through. 

Chuck sighed and sank back into his seat, scowling. He thought he heard Casey mutter, “Ninjas. Amateurs,” but it was more likely an auditory illusion.


	12. Lessons in Stalking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re opening up a Pandora’s box. Be careful what you wish for. — _James Waters_

**18 OCTOBER 2007**   
**BACHELOR PAD**   
**16:17 PDT**

He used his time wisely. Though Casey had recommended—in the form of an order, naturally—that Chuck take a nap, Chuck used the time waiting for Sarah to make progress on his personal setup. He unloaded his new computer, set up the monitor, the mouse, the speakers. It took time for him to enable the security algorithm that would fool anybody but the geekiest geeks in the CIA tech department about his computer usage. Since their mission in Burbank was classified, he doubted Sarah would get access to those types, so he felt confident as he set up the mirror account that would hide his usage. He selected the passwords that Sarah and her team would have to hack with care.

For fun, he made passwords things she would recognize—souvlak1, Rad0msk0, The_St1ng, Wh1skey-Tang—

He felt his eyes roll back into his head.

An abandoned B-52 in a field, covered by weeds and graffiti.

WHISKEY. TANGO. FOXTROT.

PROJECT OMAHA.

WHISKEY—92 percentile scores in cognitive data assimilation, approved for field work, subject recommended to MARDUK.

TANGO—93.7 percentile, complications arising due to auditory and visual stimuli incurring psychotic episodes and instability far exceeding “safe” levels of Dendraphyl, subject declared major risk, TERMINATED.

FOXTROT—98 percentile. Subject shows amazing capability for cognitive data assimilation, exceeds all expectations of participating scientists and Dr. NAME BLOCKED. Initial resistance to hypnosis therapy—

PROJECT REDACTED.

An abandoned B-52 again.

Chuck’s eyes returned to their sockets.

Without a word, without a reaction, he climbed to his feet and rooted around through the bags on his bed until he found the packet of dry-erase markers. He crossed to his new white-board and began to write, quickly and furiously.

 **Where’s Bryce?** went across the top of the board. Chuck drew a line, dissecting the board down the middle, and began to scribe dates, making a new tick in the line for each date.

**26 SEP – Sends PKG to C.B., contacts C.B. via satellite phone**

**28/29 SEP – ATHENS? Delivers menu to S.W. and C.B.?**

**16 OCT – Delivers name “P.D.” to C.B. @ Madison Mercy Hospital, LA**

Chuck flipped the whiteboard over and began writing down everything he could remember from the flashes about Project Omaha and the mysterious Whiskey, Tango, and Foxtrot. Because the Gio Pete’s menu and the flash he’d just had seemed connected, he figured the name Phillip Dartmoor figured in, so he wrote “P.D.” on this side of the board as well, circling in with a red marker and drawing a large blue question mark next to it. As soon as his computer was safely shielded from any prying eyes that the government might send, he’d check.

Something told him that it wasn’t wise to reveal just how much he knew yet. Chuck Bartowski had finally learned his lesson with the US Government, and he was playing this one close to the vest.

Because he heard footsteps on the stairwell, Chuck shoved the white board into his closet and turned, innocently, to face Casey. “What’s up?”

“Get downstairs. Walker’s on her way over.”

“Is she bringing her new friend?”

Since Chuck couldn’t quite interpret Casey’s growl for either assent or “I hope not,” he decided it was probably the latter. He followed the NSA agent downstairs—he took one of the couches, Casey sat in the worn, brown recliner that Chuck was positive hadn’t been there the day before. Their interior decorator would never approve.

Casey stripped his gun and began laying parts, methodically, on a cleaning cloth. After a moment, Chuck watched in fascination. “How on earth do you know which part to clean first?” he asked, leaning forward to get a better look at the military precision.

Casey merely pushed on his forehead, shoving him back into the couch. Chuck whimpered as that movement sent flashes of white and agony through his goose-egg.

He minded his own business until Sarah arrived.

She did so presently, raising her eyebrows to see both of her teammates waiting for her. 

“Walker,” Casey greeted, his tone neutral. “I assume you didn’t lead Carina straight to us.”

“I know how to shake a tail.” Sarah didn’t sound offended, just resigned. “And Carina’s got other things to worry about than the two of you.”

“I just bet she does.” Casey, satisfied that his gun was finally clean, began to reassemble it.

“I’m sorry I thought you were gay,” Chuck blurted out before he could stop himself. When both Sarah and Casey turned on him, one annoyed, the other outright gaping, he hunched his shoulders forward. “What? I am!”

“Playing for the other team, Walker?” Casey voice took on a happy note that it usually contained only when he was picking on Chuck. A smirk was already beginning to creep in. “That explains most everything except your fascination with wonder-boy’s—”

Chuck wasn’t sure where the knife came from—he certainly hadn’t seen Sarah move. But a knife hilt blossomed from the wall three inches from Casey’s head nonetheless.

It would have made Chuck wet himself in terror. Casey just laughed. “You’re fixing that, Walker. Don’t want to lose our security deposit—tax-payers’ dollars at work, you know.”

Sarah made a Casey-like noise.

“So!” Chuck said, too loudly, hoping to move away from this topic, and quickly. “So, uh, what’s up? DEA, drug lord, diamond heists, what? Yeah, let’s talk about that! That sounds like a good idea to me. What about you guys?”

Sarah retrieved her knife and sheathed it before she sat next to Chuck on the couch (Chuck hoped his sidling away from the knife wasn’t too obvious). “Carina came into town a couple of days before you both got here from DC. I was authorized by Graham to help her retrieve a diamond from a man named Peyman Alahi.”

Chuck tensed, waiting for the flash.

“Nothing?” Sarah asked, raising her eyebrows. “Well, either way, he’s a drug lord—an ‘international financier of an opium cartel.’” She raised her fingers to make air-quotes as she said this—Chuck guessed she was quoting a briefing of some sort. “Carina was after a diamond he was holding—”

“What would an ex-DEA agent need with a diamond that size? Besides out-blinging Flava Flav?”

Casey grunted. “Probably hoping to trade it—move up the covert DEA ranks.”

That theory certainly made more sense to Chuck, so he nodded and shrugged, settling in to listen to the rest of Sarah’s recitation.

“Graham authorized me to aid Carina, but I was to make sure I returned the diamond to him rather than letting Carina take it. She’s a bit of a…wild card.” Sarah bit her lip for a moment, as if debating just how much she should say. “We brought in a contractor for the job, an expert on the safe that Peyman was using to store the diamond. We would’ve waited for Chuck and the intel to get here, but Peyman was moving the diamond within 72 hours, so we had to act quickly.”

Casey shrugged, a little “that makes sense” movement. “Who’d you get?”

“Fidget.”

Casey actually groaned. “You didn’t,” he said.

“We didn’t have much choice—we were on a deadline.” Outwardly, Sarah didn’t move but because Chuck was sitting right next to her on the couch, he felt her bristle.

“Who’s Fidget?” Chuck asked.

“One of the best safe experts in the country.”

“And one that can be bought for a price,” Casey added, rolling his eyes at Sarah. “Any price. Which I’m guessing is what happened.”

“Look, he turned out to be useful. Without him, we wouldn’t have known about the twenty-thousand volts of electricity surrounding the diamond!”

“And when did he turn on you?” Casey wanted to know.

Sarah glowered for so long that Chuck feared another handily thrown knife might make its appearance by Casey’s head. If she ever decided she didn’t want to miss anymore, two members of Operation Prometheus could be dead in seconds. 

“Yesterday,” Sarah said. “He gave up Carina’s name—he didn’t know mine. Peyman tracked Carina down this morning. She got away, but she’s pretty intent on getting the diamond and skipping town.”

“So what now?” Chuck asked.

“I’m not giving up the diamond. Carina will realize that eventually. Carina disappears, Peyman’s men will spend the next few years tracking a ghost.” Sarah shrugged. “Chances are, ‘Carina Miller’ will die publicly in some place like Burundi, and the woman we know as Carina will pop up with a new alias to cause trouble somewhere else.”

“Ah.”

“Assuming,” Sarah said through gritted teeth, “she actually sticks to the plan and listens to me.” Her tone conveyed her skepticism about the possibility of that ever happening.

Casey inserted the final piece into his gun. “Guess we’ll just wait for the inevitable bad stuff to go down, and we’ll deal with it when it does,” he said, and chambered a round.

“Another for the ‘Casey’s little life lessons’ book,” Chuck remarked. When Casey and Sarah gave him confused looks, he raised his hands in a “what can you do?” motion. “I’m going to start writing them down, I swear I will.”

“All right.” It was another one of Sarah’s automatic responses to Chuck’s nerd moments. She frowned at him. “You’re supposed to be on medical leave. Go upstairs and take a nap.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Go anyway.” Sarah’s look finished the sentence: or I will make you.

“Okay, okay.” It was easier to agree than to fight, so Chuck heaved a melodramatic sigh and headed for the staircase.

“And don’t just spend the whole time on the computer.”

“Nag, nag, nag.” Chuck glared before he stomped up the spiral stairs.

“Guess with Carina out there, we’ll be working from ‘home’ for the rest of the day,” Casey said. “I’ve wired the computers in here to Castle’s work flow, but there’s only one work station. Guess you’re on paperwork detail, Walker.”

“Or she can just use my computer,” Chuck offered from the top of the stairs. “Since I’m apparently four—and grounded.”

“You’re supposed to be napping.”

“Bed’s all the way on the other side of the room from the computer,” Chuck said. “And since I’m not really tired anyway, it’s not going to matter. I’ll just stare at the ceiling while you work.”

Casey snickered as he holstered his gun. “Usually the other way around, isn’t it, Bartowski?”

Chuck and Sarah rolled their eyes at him, but Sarah was already heading up the stairs, which meant the discussion was over. Chuck moved to the bed, dumped the bags on the floor, and flopped down face-first. He winced—bad idea with his body as sore as it was.

A few seconds later, he heard Sarah tap on the keyboard. “Password, Chuck?” she called.

“Oh, right.” Chuck levered himself off of the bed and crossed over to the computer. Since Sarah didn’t take the hint and move aside, he had to reach around her—and get a good whiff of her shampoo in the process. 

“Four passwords, Chuck?”

“Let the games begin.” Chuck indulged himself in one last deep breath before he straightened. “Everything should work for you now.”

“Thanks.”

Chuck kicked off his shoes and crawled beneath the covers, grumbling under his breath at his overprotective teammates the whole time. He yanked the covers up to his chin in an act of defiance. Though he hadn’t been tired even a few seconds before, the flat surface, the adrenaline crash, and the constant abuse he’d put his poor body through all teamed up against him. His eyelids drooped.

“Chuck?”

He almost didn’t catch Sarah’s whisper. Fighting exhaustion, he raised himself up onto his elbows and blinked heavily at her. “What’s up?” Why he felt the need to whisper back, he had no idea.

She was nibbling on her lip, looking not at him but the computer screen. Chuck could see her outline in the dimness, her profile wreathed by the blue-white of the monitor light. 

“That thing, with the ninja at Ellie’s apartment…” Sarah kept her gaze on the monitor. “It…it won’t happen again. I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”

“Oh.” Chuck stayed where he was until his abdomen began to burn. “Thanks, Sarah.”

**18 OCTOBER 2007**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**19:21 PDT**

When he woke, splayed over half of the bed, Sarah was gone, but the computer had been turned off, the blinds opened to let in the dusky light, and all of the bags had been put away. He imagined that everything had been stowed neatly in its place. His first thought was amusement that a woman knew more about his bedroom than he did. His second was curiosity—what on earth had Sarah done to his computer since he’d allowed her access? One smile and the woman could twist him around her little finger if she chose.

He was glad she had decided to use her powers for good.

He rose, cursing his aching body and ruing the fact that Ellie had denied him Demerol. When he wandered over to the computer, he saw that Sarah had left him a piece of white paper draped over the keyboard.

**Schnookie lives on.**

Chuck laughed and rooted through his desk drawer until he located scotch tape. He taped the note on the wall right over his monitor, where he would be able to glance up and see it during work.

As he did so, a pair of picture frames on the corner of the desk caught his eye. He was positive they hadn’t been there before he’d gone to sleep.

He sank into the desk chair. So that was where his pictures had gone. There they were, crumpled, weathered, worn, almost pathetic behind the picture frames Sarah had picked. Heedless that he was smudging the glass, Chuck trailed his fingers along them, and felt another small piece of him click into place.

He pulled off the back of the frames, plucking each photo out and smoothing it straight with his fingers, lingering on the three faces in each of them, faces that had traveled with him all over the world now, hidden close to his heart. He then folded the pictures and stuck both in his pockets.

“Casey? You home?” he called as he jogged down the stairs.

Apparently, his babysitters had vanished. Chuck wondered briefly if they were okay—it would always be with him, he knew, the back-of-the-mind doubt about everybody in his life, wondering if they were hurt, if they were safe, if they had secretly been abducted by Cylons hell-bent on his destruction. He’d have to get used to it.

Or he’d go slowly insane. Either way.

Chuck, realizing that his clothes reeked of his panic sweat from earlier, began stripping before he’d even reached the bathroom. Since he didn’t know if Casey or Sarah would return soon, he showered quickly and ran upstairs in just a towel, his clothes bundled under one arm. 

Who on earth had picked the clothes in his closet? He pondered as he pawed through his selection. It was a pretty typical closet for a software designer—a row of white, short-sleeved button up shirts. Geek attire. Nerdy T-shirts (his favorite was “Cowbell Hero”), neutral, boring slacks. Had the CIA selected his clothes? Or had…Sarah? She’d had a hand in decorating the Bachelor Pad and Castle, so why not his closet, too?

He wasn’t sure how he felt about a woman picking out all of his clothes. In fact, he was going clothes shopping as soon as his system could handle it. It was time to take control over something in his life.

Still, he had to appreciate some aspects of the whole thing. Like the clothes actually fitting him—and fitting well. Given the nature of his plans, he chose a dark shirt, military style with pockets and epaulets and everything, and dark jeans. He finger-combed his wet hair, donned his tracker watch, his by-now trustworthy chucks.

And, grabbing his keys and wallet, he left before Sarah or Casey could catch him.

**18 OCTOBER 2007**   
**CHUCK’S CAR**   
**20:32 PDT**

If it was slightly stalkerish to sit in a parking garage and wait for his sister to get of work, what he was doing now knocked the stalker level through the red zone and out of the park. But Chuck didn’t care. He just ate another Sizzling Shrimp and continued to stare out the windshield. Though he’d brought night-vision enhanced binoculars, they sat unused on the dashboard. Even he wasn’t about to admit to that level of stalking.

He’d counted thirteen passersby on the sidewalk. Four had gone into the building he watched now. Three others had come out. Two people sat on a park bench across the street while their dogs sniffed every inch of the curb twice.

Still, no sign of her.

It probably wasn’t unusual. He’d taken the time to count windows, he knew the floor plan of the building. Figuring out which apartment was hers had been easy—the windows were dark, and had been since he’d arrived. She clearly wasn’t home, probably wouldn’t be for hours. A woman in the final year of her doctorate should be studying, and she’d always preferred the library for that. So it made sense.

He could wait. He had all the time in the world—or at least he did until he was required to clock back in at Castle, or Casey and Sarah showed to drag him back to the Bachelor Pad.

Another person strolled by. Chuck ate another Sizzling Shrimp.

Life, he reflected as he munched, was a crazy journey. In a Buy More, only a couple of miles away from where he sat under a broken streetlight, there stood a wall—a shrine, a tribute that, put bluntly, gave him the heebie-jeebies. And now, here he was in a parked car, doing his own stalking. The double-standard was almost enough to put him off his lunch. It certainly would have if his lunch—or dinner, really—weren’t Sizzling Shrimp.

He wished he’d made a stakeout mix for the occasion. Maybe a little “Every Breath You Take” action by the Police. “Private Eyes.” Hell, even Weird Al Yankovic’s “Melanie” perfectly fit the situation.

He started humming the last under his breath—and the passenger door opened.

Chuck’s reaction was part fight, part flight. He scrambled back against the door even as his hands flailed out in a poor imitation of a kung fu stance. Sizzling Shrimp flew everywhere.

Carina Miller looked less than impressed. “Well, hey there, Chuckie.”

Chuck stared at her in absolute horror. Sarah, he thought distantly, was not going to like this at all. “What are you doing here?”

“Curious, mostly.” Carina peered around the car, taking in the sights and even giving a cute little wave to the couple on the bench with the dogs. “Nice place. A little low-class for the likes of a CIA analyst, though, wouldn’t you say?”

“It happens to be a perfectly respectable neighborhood,” Chuck said, a bit stiffly. “If I were a grad student or just starting off in my career, I would jump at the chance to live in such a place.”

Carina twitched a shoulder. She’d traded the ninja couture for a slinky top that revealed more than it covered, and painted-on jeans. Chuck wondered if all female agents insisted on going around in as little as possible. He couldn’t say he minded, but it would make the job…interesting. And rough, at points. He figured the Intersect probably needed a great deal of concentration.

“Give me a beach cottage in Ibiza any day,” Carina said, drawing Chuck’s attention back to the matter at hand—that he was alone. In a parked car. With an ex-DEA agent that had a bone to pick with his new partner. 

“Carina, what are you doing here? In my car? Right now?”

“I want to see what’s got Sarah in such a tizzy.” Carina’s smile took on the cat that dined on gourmet canary edge as she eyed Chuck. He shook off the sensation of feeling like a very cheap piece of meat. “I have to say, I’m a little surprised. You’re not what I expected.”

“I get that a lot.”

“So what do you do, Chuck, that leads to single-car stakeouts in perfectly respectable neighborhoods?”

“What I do and what I’m doing are completely unrelated.” Since she wasn’t going anywhere, Chuck returned to what was left of his Sizzling Shrimp. “I’m an analyst, like you said. Risk assessment, mostly.”

Carina chuckled. “They stuck Sarah Walker with a risk assessment analyst? That’s just rich.”

“Who says I’m assessing Sarah’s risk? She could be my bodyguard.”

“You’re new,” Carina said. Chuck didn’t correct her one way or the other. “You’re still shiny from the factory. Here’s how it is—when a field agent like Sarah gets stuck with a ‘risk assessment’ analyst…well, it just means she’s one step away from a burn notice.” Carina laughed, harshly, humorlessly. There was almost sympathy in the noise, Chuck thought, but he didn’t know if it was for Sarah or for his own naïveté. “Agent Casey getting stuck with an analyst, too? I figured with the Bryce thing, Sarah makes sense, but Casey—oh, that’s just funny.”

“You’re a very cold woman,” Chuck said. “And no, Sarah doesn’t make sense. I’m fairly sure, as one of your hated risk assessment analysts, that Bryce acted on his own volition.”

“What? To get dead?”

“W-what?” Had Bryce died and nobody told him? Then who had delivered the Phillip Dartmoor clue into his jacket pocket?

“It’s an occupational hazard,” Carina went on, as if Chuck hadn’t spoken at all. “Getting dead. Wait—own volition? Do you know something I don’t? Did Bryce Larkin commit suicide?” Carina perked up at the thought of new gossip. “I heard he just went rogue and they put a bullet in him.”

“Ah—ah—”

No. Bryce Larkin wasn’t dead. Somewhere deep inside him, Chuck would _know_ if his best friend from college had kicked the bucket. Which meant that the government didn’t want their agents, ex or otherwise, to know. Still, Bryce Larkin being dead? That was the best cover the government could think up? Weak, Chuck decided.

But who was he to blow somebody else’s cover?

“What I meant to say is that he went rogue on his own, and he left Sarah completely out of the loop when he did it. I’m not here to assess Sarah. Sarah is fine. She’s good—fantastic, even.” Chuck stuffed a whole Sizzling Shrimp in his mouth and glowered at Carina, daring her to say otherwise.

“Well, that’s good, considering.”

“Con-considering?” Chuck coughed as a piece of shrimp lodged itself in his windpipe. “Considering what, exactly?”

“Oh, you know.” Carina peered through the windshield, her eyes cutting left and right. “What exactly are we staking out here, anyway? This looks more boring than usual.”

Chuck ignored the question. “What do you mean, you know? Considering that Sarah and Bryce were, what, partners?”

Carina laughed again. “Partners? Yes.”

“What are you saying? That they were…more than partners?” Chuck felt the car shrinking all around him, though he had no earthly idea why. He had no claim to a woman like Sarah, so—so what if she and Bryce had been partners in more than one sense? It should feel like a betrayal. That was illogical. And no way in hell should it feel like somebody was slowly and systematically sucking all of the oxygen out of his new Subaru. Chuck took a deep breath and tried to hold it together.

Carina, peering through the night-vision binoculars now, just smirked. “You sound like you’re surprised, Chuck. A couple of good-looking people like Bryce and Sarah, all those high-octane situations, life and death day in and day out, how do you expect them _not_ to get together?”

“They’re not pandas in a zoo!”

“Either way.”

Because very, very uncomfortable images were flashing through his mind about his best friend and his new partner, Chuck squirmed in his seat. “What are you really doing here, Carina?”

“I want my diamond.”

“Well, whoop-dee-doo for you. I don’t have it. Talk to Sarah.”

“I’d do that. Except, I can’t find Sarah.” Carina draped an arm around the back of Chuck’s seat and began to toy with his hair, making him flinch. But there didn’t seem to be anywhere to go but out of the car. “I can find you, though. So—”

“Are you kidnapping me?” Panic began to crawl through him.

Carina just laughed. “Honestly, Chuck. We’re all on the same side here, remember? I’m not kidnapping you.”

“Whew.”

“But I _am_ going to use you.” Carina’s eyes sparkled with unhealthy fun. “You can be used to pass on a message, and I’m not missing that opportunity.”

When Carina shifted to grab something out of her belt, Chuck tensed, waiting for a gun. She pulled out a cell phone instead, smirking at him as she activated the video feature. “Smile, Chuckles!”

Chuck did—until he felt something cold against the side of his neck. The smile died; sweat popped up to take its place.

“Hey, Sarah,” Carina told the camera, leaning close enough to Chuck that he could smell her shampoo. Strawberries—fitting for red hair. He would now forever associate that scent with terror. “Me and Chuckie here, we’re just hanging out. So how’s about that diamond, huh? You’ve got twenty minutes—no, let’s make that 45 minutes. Traffic’s a bitch this time of night.” She blew a kiss at the camera and ended the video. Keeping the gun to Chuck’s neck, she sent the video whizzing away into the ether.

“I thought you weren’t kidnapping me!”

“I’m not.” Carina gave him a winning smile as she holstered her gun. “We’re not going anywhere. So technically, I’m just holding you hostage.”

“Oh. Good. Technicalities.” Chuck put his hands on the steering wheel and sighed. It occurred to him that he could probably try and run away, but if Carina could give Sarah a bloody nose, he had no idea what she might be able to do to him. So he rested his aching forehead on the wheel, right between his hands. “Now what? We wait for Sarah and Casey to arrive and somebody gets shot?”

“Nobody’s going to get shot. We’ve got thirty minutes before Sarah gets here, so we might as well either finish your stakeout, or get to know each other.”

“This is the weirdest hostage situation ever,” Chuck said. 

“Try not to think of it as a hostage situation.” Carina’s voice took on a playful note. “Who are we watching? The Russians?” She purposely dropped her voice and leaned toward Chuck, conspiratorially. “It’s the Russians, isn’t it? It’s always the Russians with you analyst types. You just like to forget the Cold War ended.”

“It’s not the Russians.”

“Then who?” 

Chuck didn’t answer. He heard more than saw the predatory smirk overtake Carina’s features, but he didn’t open his eyes. To do so would acknowledge something he wasn’t sure he wanted to face.

“We could always talk more about Bryce and Sarah. That seems to be a favorite topic of yours.”

Honestly, he’d rather be gut-punched by the entire defensive lineup of the Green Bay Packers than think any more about Sarah and Bryce. Together. So he gritted his teeth. “Her name’s Jill.”

“What?”

“The stakeout. Her name’s Jill.”

For a long moment, there was silence from the passenger seat. And Carina began to laugh, genuine chuckles that shook her whole torso. Chuck finally lifted his forehead from the steering wheel to gape at her, his jaw nearly dropping when Carina wiped a bit of moisture from one eye. “Oh, this is just precious,” she said, grinning. “Does Sarah know?”

“What? No, Sarah doesn’t know. She’d have been here a lot sooner otherwise, don’t you think?” Chuck scowled. Here he was, staking out his ex’s place, and now he had the DEA—ex-DEA—laughing at him. There were other ways, healthier ways, to spend an evening. “Don’t forget, you’re technically holding me hostage. For a friggin’ diamond.”

“The diamond’s going to end up in the right hands either way.” Carina chuckled again. “This way, I get my old job back. So what’s she look like, this Jill of yours? Just so I can help you keep watch?”

He dithered for a moment, but eventually gave up with a shrug. Sarah had trusted this woman enough to go on missions with her. And it wasn’t like they had much else to do. “Brown hair, brown eyes, slightly egg-headed,” he said. “She was wearing glasses last time I saw her, though I don’t know if she’s gotten contacts or anything since then.”

He had to face it: there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot he knew about Jill Roberts anymore. Not since he’d received her last letter—two days before they’d bunkered him.

“Hm.” Carina shifted, lowering herself a little so as to appear inconspicuous. She raised the binoculars and made a noise in the back of her throat. “Five-seven?”

“Or thereabouts, yeah.”

“Pretty in a nerdy sort of way, likes purple?”

Chuck bolted upright. He’d just spotted the lone figure approaching the apartment building. It wasn’t surprising that Carina had seen her first, given that she had the binoculars. Chuck leaned forward, straining his eyes—

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, take these.” Carina shoved the binoculars into his hand (ignoring his yelp when the movement jarred his scrapes), muttering something under her breath. Chuck was almost positive he caught the words “nerd love,” but he couldn’t be sure. With trembling hands, he raised the binoculars to his eyes…

And there she was, looking exactly as breathtaking as she had five years, three months, and nineteen days before, when she’d kissed him good-bye on his sister’s doorstep in Echo Park so that he could have one final day with Ellie before shipping off to Army OCS.

Little things had changed—her hairstyle was different (he couldn’t have said how), she wore different glasses, and she’d usually worn old T-shirts and jeans at Stanford rather than the stylish lilac sweater and slacks the woman heading up the front steps of the apartment building wore now. This woman carried a grocery bag under one arm. As Chuck watched, she half-turned and smiled at a neighbor walking by.

The smile made his teeth hurt.

“You okay there?” Carina asked, almost bored.

Chuck ignored her. He knew it was creepy to sit there and watch through binoculars as Jill mounted the steps, as she rooted around for her keys, as she unlocked the door, but he didn’t blink until she’d finally vanished into the building and out of his sight.

Then, and only then, did he lower the binoculars.

His chest hurt. It wasn’t the constant ache that had throbbed through him all day, it wasn’t the bruising across torso from the seatbelt. His chest burned, as if somebody had super-heated a poker and was now pushing it, slowly and forcefully, into his sternum, inch by inch. He could all but feel the heat against his skin, sizzling and popping, filling the car with the acrid stench of burned flesh. Seeing Morgan had been a happy experience, finding Ellie again had completed the hole in his life. Seeing Jill Roberts with her grocery bag and her purple sweater just _hurt_. 

Chuck actually moved to put his hand on his chest—to do what, he didn’t know. It wouldn’t ease the ache. The wound wasn’t _real_. It was all in his head, so why did it feel like his heart might shrivel and die at any second now? He heard his breath speed up in his ears, rasping strangely.

“Whoa.” Carina tensed.

Chuck absently put up a hand to wave at her, tell her he was fine. But she wasn’t looking at him—she was peering out the car window, over her shoulder. Tension ran through all of her limbs, making her seem like a long-limbed predator about to strike—

“Move!” she shouted, shoving him toward the door.

“Ow!” Chuck had no choice but to lunge for the handle, the way that Carina pushed him. He more fell than climbed from the car, stumbling out onto the sidewalk. Though the ache in his chest didn’t vanish, the panicky sensation from the night before returned, taking over everything. “What the hell, Carina?”

“We’ve got company! Move.” Carina moved around the car in two long strides and yanked on his arm to pull him along.

Chuck had no choice—it was either run or be dragged. The woman had a grip to rival Iron Man’s. Holy hell. “What are you talking about?”

“Keep running, but eight o’clock!”

Eight o’clock? What? Oh, she was telling him their enemies’ positions. Even as his chucks pounded pavement, Chuck brought up a picture of a clock face in his mind. He looked over his left shoulder—and wanted very suddenly to wet himself.

Two thugs, big guys. Meaty faces. Angry looks on those meaty faces. They sprinting down the sidewalk after Carina and him.

Still, logic apparently hadn’t been tossed out the window with the flight reaction. “Why would I want to go with you?” Chuck demanded as he tore down the sidewalk beside Carina. “You took me hostage!”

Carina veered off into an alley. Chuck followed. “Yeah—for fun! I’m not going to be the one that kills Sarah Walker’s new boy-toy!” 

“I highly resent being referred to as a toy.” Chuck stumbled over an aluminum can and would have crashed into the wall had Carina not yanked on his wrist. In addition to a vise-like grip, she also had the reflexes of a puma.

Was every agent he would meet at this job going to be the specimen of athletic perfection? Geez.

Behind him, he could hear the slap of nice shoes on pavement. They hadn’t lost the rather imposing men chasing them, after all. Damn it. A slew of panicky swear words slipped through Chuck’s mind. He pushed his arms and legs to go faster.

No dice.

The entire time, Carina kept up a string of commands.

“C’mon, this way—”

“We’ll make the left up ahead—”

“Watch out—”

Carina veered left, onto an abandoned back street behind buildings. She hurtled a downed trash can with all of the grace of a track star. Chuck did the same—with the grace of a drunk. He caught himself at the last moment, but visions of face-planting into the concrete still flashed through his mind.

On they ran, their pursuers right behind them the whole time. Carina weaved a zig-zag trail through the alleys that left Chuck completely lost, but he didn’t have much choice but to trust her at this point. The midgets that lived inside him took power sanders to his lungs and esophagus. His legs were on fire. His throat burned, his head spun. He wanted to simply collapsed to the concrete, to put his weak and shaking hands over his head and hope that the men with the guns would just end it all with a bullet—

He ran harder.

They made a sharp left onto a populated street, whizzing past store fronts and dodging in and out of innocent pedestrians. An alarming few paused to watch the spectacle, even when Carina leaped clear over a stroller.

The mother, chatting on her cell phone, didn’t even notice. It really did take all kinds.

Chuck dodged the stroller, tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, and yelped when Carina hauled him into another alley. Together, they ran toward the other end, toward escape, and freedom—

Chuck’s lungs burned.

Almost there—

They hurtled past a wino crumpled up against the dumpster. He gave them a bleary nod.

It didn’t sound like the goons had followed them. Maybe they’d run clear past the alley, and things would be okay again.

Two more feet—

A man stepped into view at the end of the alley. It normally wouldn’t have been a problem—they could move around him since they’d become experts at dodge-bystander—except that he had minions.

Large minions.

Large, armed minions.

Carina skidded to a halt, those too-blue eyes flicking over each guard and back to the ringleader. She stood tall, her shoulders moving just the slightest bit as she fought to catch her breath.

Chuck stumbled to a halt and immediately bent forward at the waist, focusing every cell of his being on not reliving the Sizzling Shrimp in the middle of the alley. 

“Hello, Carina,” the man at the end of the alley said.

“Peyman.” Carina nodded her head, just slightly. As if they were merely business acquaintances and she hadn’t just robbed the man blind of a multimillion dollar diamond. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Peyman scoffed (as an opening line, it _was_ pretty weak). He wasn’t a tall man, a large man, or even an imposing man. In fact, he wore a khaki windbreaker and chinos, making him seem rather bland, like an accountant or a high school principal. Until he reached into his waistband and withdrew the biggest handgun Chuck had ever seen. Simply put, the thing was monstrous—and plated in gold.

“Now that,” Chuck gasped, ignoring the fear that made him want to drop to the dirty alley floor in a fetal position, “is just excessive, don’t you think?”


	13. The Dark and the Damned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.” — _Oscar Wilde_

**19 OCTOBER 2007**   
**ABANDONED WATERFRONT WAREHOUSE**   
**00:06 PDT**

For the second time in less than thirty hours, Chuck’s knees hit the ground—hard. He bit his lip to hold back the scream. What emerged was a high-pitched sort of whimper, barely audible to anything but dogs.

Carina landed next to him with a grunt, which somehow made him feel better about his own reaction.

He couldn’t see at all—they’d stuffed a cloth bag that smelled oddly of peaches over his head back in the alley. They’d loaded him into a car, driven him away. He’d tried to focus on which way the car turned, but when he had no idea where he was to start out, it had been pretty hopeless. All he knew now was that they were in some sort of big, echo-y space, and he’d been stumbling over gravel.

The bag was whipped from his head, light flooding in where there had been only darkness before. Chuck shut his eyes and cursed. “Argh!”

The guard who’d removed Chuck’s bag did the same for Carina. She merely smirked. “Thanks, toots.”

Chuck bit his tongue over a plea that Carina please stop antagonizing the guards—the fifth, by his count. Thankfully, the guard didn’t backhand her. And maybe, Chuck realized as the guard merely shook his head and stomped out, he watched too many movies. Not everybody hit women, after all. His life wasn’t _Prison Break_.

Though come to think of it, he’d give his left foot for a full-body tattoo that would lead him out of this situation.

But since he had only his wits and a loose-cannon ex-DEA agent, Chuck sucked in a deep breath and made himself look around. The guard had dumped him and Carina on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, right in front of a bright light of some sort. Construction light, Chuck deduced after a second. It made things difficult to make out. The room became a series of blobs and smears until he wiggled around so that he had his back to the light. Now he could see the grimy floor, untreated and unwashed concrete walls. The industrial, musty smell gave it away.

An abandoned factory of some type? He and Carina had been left in a smallish room, with only the light for company—aside from the guy cowering in the corner, that was.

“Who’re you?” Chuck asked, blinking away the last of the light-spots.

But Carina beat the man to it. “Ah, Fidget. I thought I recognized the stench.”

The man turned the color of wax. “You don’t understand,” he babbled, his words tumbling over each other. “Please, Carina, you don’t understand—they threatened my family!”

Carina laughed hollowly. “You don’t have family. Unless they’re breeding slime these days and nobody told me. How much did they offer you for my name, Fidge?”

“That’s privileged.” Fidget coughed, a deep, wracking noise that indicated he’d been rabbit-punched a few times. He was a small man, on the thin side of emaciated, his eyes huge, blue, and without focus behind fish tank lenses. A shock of black hair waved every which way about his head. Everything about the man screamed perpetual motion—his palms twitched, his fingers drummed limply against the dirt floor, his knees jerked, his shoulders shrugged, his feet tapped Not hard to figure out where he would get the nickname.

But a safe expert would be required to actually crack a safe or two, wouldn’t he? As far as Chuck understood, that required a steady focus and even steadier hands. So how on earth did the chronic twitch manage to spin a dial, much less grip the handle to open an actual safe?

The rational part of his brain chimed in—what did it matter? He was in some mysterious location, his hands tied, with a safe-cracker and a trigger-happy ex-DEA agent, and somewhere in this huge compound, there was a drug lord just waiting to kill not only them, but Chuck’s new teammates as well. If they showed up.

He probably hadn’t used the phrase “uh-oh” this much in his entire life.

Carina and Fidget’s conversation hadn’t ebbed. “For crying out loud, Fidget, you’re not a lawyer. A girl just wants to know how much she’s worth on the open market these days.”

“Carina,” and Fidget coughed again, “a girl like you knows to the penny how much she’s worth. What is the going rate these days for a quick fu—”

“Hey!” Chuck’s head snapped up. “There will be none of that talk here!”

Both Fidget and Carina stared at him as though he had followed in Zaphod Beeblebrox’s footsteps and grown an extra head. “Where on earth did you find this guy?” Fidget asked Carina.

“Believe it or not, stalking his ex-girlfriend.” Carina eyed Chuck, almost uneasily. The fury at Fidget had snapped something inside of him so hard that he had heard an audible click. Suddenly, the room—which had been perfectly ordinary a few minutes before—crunched inwards, the walls physically grinding as they moved. He struggled to pull in air.

Carina tilted forward so that she could bump him with a shoulder. “What are you doing?”

Chuck gritted his teeth and stared at the floor, determined not to give in. In some part of his mind, he knew that the walls hadn’t actually moved, but every time he blinked, they were just a little bit closer…

“I’m trying not to freak out,” he said, measuring his words evenly. He’d found it stereotypical in the movies whenever crazy people rocked back and forth, but now the motion kept him grounded, made him focus on the floor instead of the walls closing in. The dwindling oxygen supply. The thousand voices screaming so loudly in his head that millions of words just became one never-ending scream. The moisture coating his entire body. He bit the inside of his cheek. “See,” he said, his voice distorted by the mouthful of cheek, “if I can hold off the panic attack until Sarah gets here, then I can watch her kick your ass for first attempting to kidnap me, and then actually getting me kidnapped!”

He expected some sort of bored rejoinder, but instead Carina studied him intensely. “You’re agoraphobic, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“In the car, you flinched every time somebody walked by.”

He had? This was news.

“When did the home office starting hiring analysts with agoraphobia?” Carina mused, mostly to herself.

Fidget, however, still heard. “You’re an analyst?” he demanded of Chuck. “For who?”

Chuck ignored him. “Carina! Ex-nay on the over-kay uff-stay!”

“Dude, I can speak pig Latin.”

Like Chuck, Carina ignored their twitchy little friend. “The agency would weed out that sort of thing, which must mean you developed this recently. On the job. And—oh, my God, you’re Bunker Boy!”

“What?” Chuck abruptly forgot all about the compacting walls.

“What?” Fidget echoed a second later.

“You helped Sarah and me out on an op. In Dubai.” Carina regarded Chuck in a whole new light now. Gone was the leer—in its place was an appreciative gleam no less dangerous to Chuck. “You hacked a bank remotely, helped us get in and out without any casualties. As I recall, you put a smiley face icon up every time we passed a screen.”

Chuck remembered the job, from about sixteen months back. It had been one of the few times he’d answered the phone to Sarah Walker instead of Bryce Larkin. He’d assumed at the time that she was working with Bryce on the mission, but apparently not.

Also, that bank had been a heck of a lot of fun to hack.

“Yeah, that was me,” he said. 

“Dude, you hacked a _bank_?” Fidget wanted to know, his eyes even bigger than usual behind the lenses.

Chuck glowered at him. “That’s classified.”

“Sarah finally got you out of that bunker, huh?” Carina smirked.

“No, actually I’m a hologram. Lifelike, isn’t it?”

Carina chuckled, shaking her head so that the strands of red fell away from her face. “Either way, it explains a lot.”

“What does that even mean—”

The door opened. Both Chuck and Fidget winced. Carina yawned. The guard who entered carried a folded-up newspaper under one arm—it was evident he was in for the long haul of guarding the prisoners.

“Did your boss get his diamond back?” Carina asked. “Hope my partner didn’t go out and pawn it off for Lakers tickets. She likes tall, sweaty men.”

Their new guard settled into a chair in the corner, a wide grin on his meaty face. “Just keep talking, sweetheart. I’ve got nothing but time.”

Chuck put his head between his knees and closed his eyes. By now, Peyman had to have reached Sarah, either through his phone or through Carina’s. They hadn’t taken his watch off—who on earth would suspect that his watch was also a tracker?—so Casey and Sarah had to know where he was. Where were they? Assembling a task force? Coming in by themselves? Or would Sarah show up with the diamond and hope for the best?

At the rate he was going, he should have stayed in the bunker, where it was safe.

Ellie’s face flashed through his mind. The way she’d hugged him, nearly suffocating him, because she couldn’t believe he was there, standing in the same parking garage, and not dead. The way Morgan had clung to him in the Buy More. Even the way Jill had waved at her neighbor before going up the stairs and disappearing into her building.

There was no way in hell he should have stayed in the bunker.

If Carina or Fidget noticed that he’d stopped freaking out, neither commented. Carina kept up a stream of cleverly-disguised insults with the guard. Chuck figured both were probably enjoying it. Hey, more power to ‘em, he figured, and focused his attention elsewhere. With the guard present, Fidget cowered against the wall, his head jerking back and forth while his body convulsed, a tyrannous and untamed surge of movement.

Chuck edged closer to him. He might not like the guy—he’d sold out Carina, after all—but they were all just hostages in this situation. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, why not? Not like I got anything else to do.”

“How on earth have you ever cracked a safe in your life?”

“Give me a safe to crack, and I’m in the zone. I feel it. Everything else? Poof—gone.” Fidget actually looked a little bit giddy. Chuck could practically see the dial spinning right before the other man’s eyes.

“But doesn’t the shaking get in the way?” he asked.

“What shaking?” Fidget’s head lolled to one side, twitched back straight. 

Chuck stared. Maybe it was appropriate that a safe-cracker would be a few digits short of a full combination. It certainly fit in with the mess that the rest of his life had become. At length, he cleared his throat. “Ah, never mind.”

Fidget tilted his head, his eyes tracking to the ceiling and back. “Hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Someone’s coming.”

Across the room, Carina and the guard fell silent. Whether it was at Fidget’s announcement, of if they’d heard something too, Chuck didn’t know. He strained his ears, positive that Fidget must be half-bat—

The door opened.

It wasn’t rammed in by a rescue task force, kicked open by a hero, slammed open by a vengeful Sarah or Casey. No, the door merely opened, calmly, revealing a silhouette that Chuck knew well. He opened his mouth to speak—

The guard went for his gun. He didn’t even get his hand to the holster before there was an odd spitting noise.

Two patches of red blossomed across the front of his T-shirt.

The reek of cordite seared the air.

Chuck watched it all in some absurd slow-motion. In the movies, gunfire propelled a man through the air, sent him soaring. A swell of dramatic music—bang—a short flight, a literal dead drop. But here, in this dirty room, the guard merely crumpled to the floor, a tower imploding in on itself, body bouncing as he hit the floor. He almost looked like he was sleeping, save that his eyes were wide open and, because of the way he’d fallen, staring right at Chuck. Chuck gazed back, cold seizing his entire body. He felt his gorge rise, but it froze, like the rest of him, suspended in one perfect moment of hell.

I just watched someone die. The thought bounced through the empty recess that had once been his skull. I just watched my best friend kill somebody.

Carina, evidently much more used to death than Chuck, climbed awkwardly to her feet. “Should have known it was too good be true. You look good for a dead man, Bryce.”

Bryce Larkin made no reply. He merely holstered the gun, his movements mechanical, and stepped past the man he had shot, heading for Chuck and ignoring all others in the room. Something in his hand glinted.

A knife—not unlike those preferred by his ex-partner.

Instantly, Chuck forgot about the bizarre it was that his best friend could be there at all. Thoughts of the dead man fled his mind. He scrambled backward across the floor, scuttling like a crab, eyes glued to the knife. “What?” he demanded, panic raising his voice. “A gun is too good for me? Gonna stick a knife between my ribs instead?”

Bryce’s steps faltered. “What? No, I’m not going to kill you, Chuck. I’m here to rescue you.”

“Why?” Perhaps it was an absurd question to ask when he was on a dirt floor with his hands bound by drug lord captors, but he didn’t care. His brain was whirling too fast for anything to process. “You didn’t have to kill that guy, Bryce! Sarah’s coming to rescue me, it’s fine.”

“Sarah’s the one that got you into this mess.” Bryce rolled his eyes and leaned around Chuck, cutting the cable ties with one easy flick.

“Was it absolutely necessary to shoot that man?” Chuck demanded, wincing as circulation flooded back into his hands. “Bryce—he could’ve had kids, a family—”

“C’mon,” Bryce said, hauling Chuck to his feet in one easy motion. He headed toward the door.

“Forgetting something?” Carina drawled.

“Oh, right.”

But instead of helping Carina and Fidget out of their own bindings, Bryce pulled out the gun. The silencer, a lethal, frightening tool, seemed to stretch for miles. Chuck’s stomach roiled—and threatened to upend itself again when Bryce pointed the gun right at Fidget’s head. 

Chuck goggled. “What are you doing?!”

On the floor, Fidget let out a laugh, his head bobbing to a tempo only he understood. “Knew it was going to come to this.”

Bryce kept his eyes and his gun trained on Fidget. “I’m eliminating a problem. Wait outside if you don’t want to see this, Chuck.”

“No!” Chuck flung himself forward with more passion than finesse. Even if Bryce had taught him all about grappling while at Stanford, skill wouldn’t have helped. The man was a lifelong gymnast, for crying out loud. Chuck’s mass hitting him, though, was enough to throw him off.

He fell on the gun arm, knocking it sideways. He caught a glimpse of Fidget’s pale, startled face, staring in terror—

The gun went off, the reverb ricocheting through Chuck’s chest—

The shot went wide, missing the safe-cracker by a foot.

Bryce grabbed Chuck’s shoulder and tossed him aside. “The man betrayed government secrets to a drug lord and endangered you and the others. He’s too much of a risk.”

“Then throw him in prison!” Chuck stepped between Bryce and Fidget. He had no idea where all of this bravery had suddenly come from. He had no love for Fidget, but nobody deserved to go like the guard currently pooling lifeblood all over the floor behind Bryce. “He’s a hostage here, just like me, just like Carina. Killing him is no answer.”

Bryce glared at Chuck. It was a cliché to think it, but his friend had developed killer’s eyes, too bright, too blue, too jaded. Chuck’s heart broke a little to see it. He swallowed, his adam’s apple bobbing. 

“Sorry to break up the party, boys,” Carina said, drawing their attention to her. She’d managed to cut away her own bonds and was now holding the dead guard’s gun, her eyebrows high. “Maybe we should escape now, yes?”

To Chuck’s everlasting relief, Bryce holstered the gun. He tossed Chuck his knife as he moved to the door to check out the hallway situation. “Cut him loose. You owe my friend your life, Fidget. He’s a better person than me. Just remember that when the next high bidder comes around.”

Fidget whimpered. Though that may have been Chuck cutting his ties. It gave him a bad moment—Sarah’s bloody wrist and her flinch made Chuck dizzy to the point where he had to shut his eyes and take a deep breath—but he managed without any damage this time. Fidget immediately popped to his feet, rubbing feeling back into his hands.

They left the room and the guard behind. Chuck had been in strange raiding parties during his D&D days, back when Morgan had been fond of playing of oddly-named min-max characters, leaving Chuck’s rogue or mage with the world’s weirdest sidekicks. None of that came close to the general freakishness of prowling through an abandoned warehouse with an ex-DEA agent, a rogue CIA agent, and the twitchiest criminal on the planet. Carina seemed insistent that Chuck stay right behind Bryce, while she kept close behind him, forming an agent sandwich. Fidget the Doomed kept up the rear.

“Quiet,” Bryce hissed when Chuck stumbled over a piece of rebar.

Chuck glared. They were moving quickly through a series of abandoned hallways, hallways that had once been the site of industry, with wide doorways that led to storage rooms. Patches of wall had been eaten away so that moonlight could filter in and light the world in a silver gradient. Beams of it fell over Bryce’s broad shoulders and perfectly coiffed head as he led the way. The guy even dressed like James Bond for a rescue mission.

No wonder Sarah had been with the guy.

Chuck quashed that feeling before it could truly take hold and poison the rest of him. Now was not the time. Bryce was here to rescue him—Chuck shouldn’t resent the guy, even if he had betrayed his country, screwed with his ex-partner’s plans, and sent his best friend into a nauseating spiral of doubt and danger. Okay, maybe he could resent the guy a little. Every time Chuck closed his eyes, the dead guard’s slack face threatened to overpower him, after all. He kept his eyes open.

“Alahi and his guards are in the main bay, between us and the exit,” Bryce whispered, stopping the group right before they could round a corner. All four of them flattened against a wall. “I got past them once, but—”

“Need a distraction?” Carina offered, tilting her head away from the wall so that she could see around Chuck.

Bryce nodded once, tersely.

“How many?”

“Six, plus Alahi.”

“Piece of cake.” Carina’s smirk deepened—Chuck could barely make out the edges of her in the moonlight, but somehow her face remained perfectly lit. It was like magic. “Can I borrow your knife? I’m feeling like a knife fight.”

“What is it with you and Sarah and knives?” Chuck asked. “You’re like the sisterhood of the traveling blades or something.”

“Not now, Chuck.” Bryce glanced around the corner again, checking for any guards. So far they’d gotten lucky. “I’ve got a vehicle about two kilometers southeast. Rendezvous in fifteen minutes, or we’re leaving you behind. You’re clear—go!”

Carina skulked away, dragging a silently-protesting Fidget with her. Bryce waited until they’d vanished out of sight and down a stairwell before he turned to Chuck. “You stay right behind me, got it? I’m going to get us out of here, but you have to do exactly as I say.”

“Okay. Wait a second.” Maybe it was the dead guard or just general shock, but Chuck’s brain finally reminded him just how strange this situation was. “Why are you here, Bryce? You’re supposed to be off the grid.”

“I am—I’m keeping an eye on you.” Bryce peered around the corner, but sighed. He turned back to Chuck, having come to some sort of decision. “I don’t trust—”

“Sarah?” Chuck interrupted. “Why not? Sarah Walker is possibly the best thing that ever happened to me. She got me out of that godforsaken bunker.”

“And got you captured in Greece,” Bryce pointed out. 

“We weren’t traitors. We would’ve had to turn ourselves in eventually.”

Still, Bryce glowered. “And then they stuck you with John Casey, of all people. I don’t trust him. He’s a burn-out, an old-school killer.”

Even twenty minutes before, Chuck would have agreed. But now he drew himself to his full height, his face going to stone. “I trust him. They made sacrifices to be here, so that I could have something of a normal life.”

“Don’t ever trust anybody, Chuck. Rule number one of being a spy.”

Chuck couldn’t help it—he rolled his eyes. Maybe it was the two dangerous situations two nights in a row, or maybe it was the certainty he felt that he was about to spend his third night in the hospital, but he was suddenly very, very cranky. He glowered at Bryce. “I trust him,” he repeated, enunciating each word. “Just like I trust Sarah.”

For a long moment, Bryce didn’t say anything. “Just watch your back, Chuck. That’s all I ask. I won’t always be here to bail you out.”

“Fine.” Chuck bit the word off. “Shall we escape now? Casey and Sarah will be here at any moment.”

“Fine.” Bryce’s expression mirrored his. “Remember—do exactly as I say.”

“You and Sarah are eerily alike with your orders.”

“Shut up, Chuck.”

“See? That’s what I mea—”

Bryce slapped a hand over his mouth, holding his free hand up, his index finger higher than the others. Somebody was coming. Both men flattened themselves to the wall again. Chuck’s heart began to hammer against his ribcage when he heard the approaching footsteps. Another guard? Was he coming to check on the prisoners? Had they been busted?

The footsteps grew louder. Chuck began to sweat harder. He could feel Bryce tense up—

The guard rounded the corner.

Bryce struck like a snake. Just a blur of black and white and suddenly the guard had an arm wrapped around his neck, and Bryce’s face visible over his shoulder. The movies made choke-holds look easy—well, easy for the choker, not so much for the chokee. This wasn’t the case in real life. Both Bryce and the guard turned red almost immediately, grunting and struggling. The guard’s arms jerked like a broken puppet’s as he scrabbled for a grip, trying to dislodge Bryce. His eyes bulged; veins popped out along his forehead and neck. Bryce’s face contorted into an awful grimace. 

Chuck saw the guard go for his gun. Some instinct yanked him forward. Stone cold killer or not, Bryce was his best friend, and his rescuer. He couldn’t let some thug shoot the guy in the face—so he grabbed the thug’s gun before said thug could.

He discovered two things he’d forgotten from OCS five years before—guns were heavy. Even more than that, they were weighty with implications. You didn’t buy a gun because you wanted to make friends. You bought a gun to put holes in things, gaping, gruesome holes that would bleed all over the floor and—Chuck willed the image of the dead guard away from his mind. What now? Did he point it at the guard? No, he might hit Bryce.

Better to just hold onto the gun and let Bryce do his thing. It looked like the shorter man was winning, anyway.

Indeed, the thug went slack. Bryce staggered back, but didn’t let the man fall. Undoubtedly, it would be like felling a tree in the middle of a busy square—no way others wouldn’t hear.

“Get his feet?” Bryce panted, still holding the unconscious thug.

Chuck stared at the man’s purpled face. “Is he dead?”

“No, but he’ll have one hell of a headache. C’mon, his feet, Chuck!” 

Chuck dithered for a moment about where to put the gun, but after checking that the safety was on (he remembered to do that much at least from Officer Candidate School), he shoved it in the back of the waistband of his jeans and hurried to grab the man’s feet. It wasn’t easy, even with Bryce holding the man’s head and shoulders, to get him into one of the abandoned rooms, out of the way. For one thing, the guy was _heavy_. “What does this guy eat, anyway?” Chuck groaned as he and Bryce steered around a doorway. “Dark matter?”

“Sure feels like it,” Bryce said. They set the man off to the side and returned to the hallway after Bryce had checked to make sure the coast was clear. Before they could head out, though, Bryce turned to Chuck. “From this point on, keep your mouth shut, okay? Are you going to do that, or am I going to have to knock you out and haul you out of here in a fireman’s carry?”

“Eerily like Sarah,” Chuck repeated, but he nodded his acquiescence. 

“Well, c’mon, then.” Bryce pulled out first his silenced gun and then a second, chambering a round. “Stay close.”

They crept out into the hallway and hurried through to a staircase. At the bottom, Bryce held up a hand again. Pause. Chuck obeyed, his heart jolting in his ears. He flattened himself to the wall once more.

Bryce started to peer around the corner—

Gunshots. Close, close gunshots. Even without the oversaturation of violence in TV and the media, Chuck would never mistake that noise. Every moment of the beach outside of Athens was burned into his brain, especially the gunshots that had sent sand ricocheting everywhere. It sounded louder, more echo-y in such a big warehouse.

The air came to life with noise—shouting, possibly Peyman and his men, return gunfire. Feet pounding as bodies dove for cover.

Who were they shooting at? Carina? Or had Sarah and Casey and the rest of the cavalry arrived? Chuck squeezed his eyes closed and sent up a short prayer to any listening deity. Please, please let Sarah be all right. Oh, and Casey, too. Chuck might not like the guy much, but he didn’t wish him dead anymore.

More gunshots, puncturing the noise level with their shock.

“Sounds like Carina’s sticking to the plan,” Bryce said, inching closer to the corner. He peered around and nodded once, as the cacophony continued. “They’re all the way on the other side of the room. We’re going to go in low. Stay out of sight.”

“Bryce, you may or may not have realized this in all of our time together, but I happen to be lanky of build. Getting low may be a problem.” Chuck’s voice came out panicked, breathy.

Bryce rolled his eyes. “Chuck. Get low, or get dead. Hear me?”

Put that way…Chuck nodded hurriedly. “Got it.”

“Okay. On the count of three—one, two…go!”

Bryce dove forward, doing an impressive roll that landed him perfectly behind a set of crates ten feet away. Though he knew he was more likely to trip over his own shoelaces, Chuck prepped himself to follow—

The bullet slammed into the door jamb two inches from Chuck’s nose. He shouted and fell backwards, his arms windmilling. Thankfully, he hit the wall before he could crash to the ground.

Bryce peered around the crates, searching for the shooter. He waved urgently at Chuck. _Come here_.

Chuck shook his head. That bullet had been far too close to his head for comfort.

Bryce gave him a look. _It’s safe_.

 _Like hell it is!_ Chuck mouthed back.

As if to prove his point, a new spate of gunfire rattled the walls, peppering the space between Chuck and Bryce. It was a smart-ass move, but Chuck raised an eyebrow at Bryce and folded his arms.

Bryce held up his index finger. _Stay_.

Chuck crouched down, not sure if the bullets could penetrate the wall behind him and unwilling to find out. He peered into the main bay of the warehouse, trying to make out details in the murky darkness. Storage crates lay in piles on a dirty concrete floor—he could see patches of the wall torn out, missing, rusted through. Moonlight trickled in along the left-hand, closest to Bryce and him. He could make out shapes in the dark, on the other side of the room by what he presumed to be the exit. Peyman Alahi’s men, obviously—they were crouched behind crates, facing something on the right wall. Carina. He couldn’t see her, but he figured that was where she had to be.

He watched Bryce as the other man leaned around the crate, trying to spot his enemies in the dark. The instant he poked his head around, gunfire rattled once more. Bryce scowled and fired off two shots.

No screams of pain, so he obviously missed.

Footsteps clattered behind him—the stairs! Chuck spun just in time to see a pair of feet round the landing, knees appearing as the mystery person headed down the bottom flight—

He took off running not for the main bay but for the hallway behind the staircase. It didn’t matter that Bryce had insinuated that there was no exit this way. He had to get away, away from the gunfire, away from the guard. There was no possible way he could take on a guard. He wasn’t Bryce Larkin, who could shoot somebody in cold blood one moment and choke somebody the next.

So Chuck sprinted, not even sparing Bryce a look. He stumbled over rebar, bumped his shoulder into the wall. Grunted.

As he did so, he looked back to make sure the guard hadn’t spotted him—

Just in time to see Bryce drop the guard with a single bullet to the head. The dead body dropped to the ground, revealing Chuck’s best friend, still crouched behind the crate, gun at the ready. For a second, it was pointed straight at Chuck.

Bryce lowered the gun and waved at Chuck to come back.

But Chuck’s gorge had risen again, and this time there was no stopping it. Chuck doubled forward at the waist and puked. He dropped to all fours, coughing until only dry heaves remained. When he looked up, he could see Bryce down the hallway, still trapped behind those crates, an unreadable expression on his face. He waved again.

But Chuck climbed to his feet and shook his head. Without knowing precisely why—Bryce was there to rescue him, after all—he began running the other way, away from Bryce, away from the gunfights, away from the pile of sick he’d left in the hallway. He ran blindly, just hoping to get _away_.

When he rounded a corner and found a dead end, he stayed stock still for an eternity before simply giving in right there and sliding down the wall to the ground. As he did so, he felt the gun he’d taken from the unconscious guard nudge against his lower back.

With shaking hands, he pulled it out.

It wasn’t large. Snub-nosed, he thought it might be called. More like the pistol Casey preferred to the monster Smith & Wesson Sarah carried. Even so, it fit perfectly in his hand, and it made him want to throw up again. As if there was anything left inside him. Bryce Larkin had hollowed him out, physically and mentally.

He couldn’t close his eyes. It only brought back images of two dead guards, of the blood cascading onto the dirt floor. The way both guards had hit the ground with a thud.

He couldn’t block out the noise. The gunshots were simply too loud to be ignored, and he had to strain his ears to make sure that none of the cries of pain were Bryce or Carina, or even Fidget.

He couldn’t move. Was this what being an agent was like? Walking into a room and shooting a man before he could reach for his gun? There was something unfair about that—sure, if the guard had reached his gun, Bryce might be dead, but it felt like robbing the universe of something essential. Everything inside Chuck shuddered once, twice, and didn’t stop. He sat against the wall, the hated gun trained limply on the dead space in front of him, and shook.

Time passed—he didn’t know how much, had lost all concept of reality and subjectivity and objectivity, so that all that existed was his head, full of death, full of images and thoughts and visions of death, the dead and the dying, where there had only been his brain and the Intersect before. It hurt his abused body to sit in such a clenched position, but he didn’t stop.

Footsteps broke through the fugue state. Running footsteps, heading straight down the hallway. Toward him.

Chuck’s hands began to shake harder. Was this it? Was this the moment of truth? Was he going to have to shoot somebody? He doubted he’d even be able to hit the broad side of a blimp with the way his hands were trembling, but he still pointed the gun forward as he climbed creakily to his feet. The world threatened to spin—he didn’t feel so great.

His gun hand wavered. His watch blinked red.

Wait a second—what? Chuck transferred to a one-handed grip on the gun as he stared at his wrist. The watch served as both a communications and a homing device, but what on earth did a blinking red light mean?

The footsteps grew nearer. Chuck forgot all about his watch and willed his hand to stay steady on the gun. He didn’t necessarily want to shoot first and ask questions later, but if that wasn’t Bryce coming back for him—

He inched around the corner, gun at the ready.

It was a closer call as to who was more startled. Chuck, his nose, the foot that came within two millimeters or breaking it, or Sarah Walker. 

In the dimness, he saw her eyes go wide at the last instant. She tried to throw the kick—and would have landed flat on her butt if Casey, prowling right behind her, hadn’t grabbed her arm. He tossed her unceremoniously back onto her feet. She landed like a spring and immediately latched onto Chuck, grabbing him by the arms just above the elbow. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

He nodded, almost dumbly. They’d arrived, was all he could think. Now that Sarah and Casey were here, things were going to be better again.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Bartowski?” Casey snatched the gun from his limp hand and glowered as he checked the chamber—empty, thankfully. He stuffed the gun into his own waistband. 

“I took it from a guard,” Chuck said distantly.

“We had rules. We discussed these rules in depth. And the rules state that you are _never_ to touch guns until I’ve trained you and given you my written and explicit approval—”

“Not now, Casey.” Sarah nudged both of her partners back into the alcove and began to check Chuck over to make sure he hadn’t been winged without knowing it. “Where’s Carina?” 

Chuck pushed her away. He was sweaty, and gross, and dirty from sitting on the floor. Until he’d showered for about three weeks, nobody should touch him. “With Fidget. We split up.”

“She left you alone?” Sarah’s eyes promised death for her former partner.

“No. She left me with—with Bryce.” 

Interestingly, the mention of Bryce Larkin’s name had similar effects on both agents. All of the worry vanished off of Sarah’s face so that her expression became more like Casey’s constant angry mask. “Bryce is here?” she demanded.

“Y-yeah, he came into the room and killed the guard, got us out of there.”

“What did he want?”

“To rescue me, apparently.” Chuck swallowed, but it did nothing to still the nausea roiling through him. “He didn’t seem like your biggest fan, Casey. Or you, Sarah.”

“Probably because the last time I saw him, I was trying to put a bullet right between his eyes.” Casey said. Down the hallway, the battle raged on. “Well, either way, time to end this.”

“No!” Sarah grabbed the back of Casey’s TDUs before he could stalk away. “You need to get Chuck out of here. He’s our number one priority. I’ll go after Bryce. I know how he thinks, and he’ll be looking for Chuck.”

“Walker, if you think I’m letting a compromised agent go after her scumbag ex-partner on her own—”

Sarah jerked Casey away from Chuck and said something under her breath, so low that Chuck couldn’t hear. For a moment, it looked as though Casey might protest, but he nodded once, curtly. “Fine. But if I find out this is just you and him working together to screw us over—”

“It’s not.” Sarah flicked one glance at Chuck and slipped away into the darkness. He told himself that the look hadn’t been a silent good-bye, but he wasn’t entirely convinced. 

Before the poisonous thoughts could take hold again, Casey grunted and moved past him, facing the dead end. 

Chuck cleared his throat. “Pretty sure there’s not a door that way—”

Casey put his foot through the wall. Hard. He kicked again for good measure, forming a decent-sized hole. “Follow me,” he ordered.

“Wow, yeah. Sure.” Why hadn’t it occurred to him to kick a hole into the wall? Oh, right. Chuck would have broken his foot. 

It wasn’t a perfect solution—Chuck had to squeeze to make it, so he had no idea how Casey had done it, and the squeeze jarred the bruising on his torso, making him see white flickers at the edges of his vision. But he stumbled through the wall and coughed out the drywall he’d accidentally tried to ingest. They’d kicked through to another room, not unlike the one where he and the other hostages had been held.

The door wasn’t locked here, either. 

Casey kept a grip on the spot where Chuck’s shoulder met his neck so that he was essentially dragging the geek through the warehouse. He led with his gun, his footsteps making no noise as they headed for an exit, any exit—

Not that it mattered. Chuck stumbled along like a frat boy recovering from a three-day bender. If there was somebody in the building that didn’t hear, he would have frankly been amazed. Not that he cared. He didn’t, really. A numbing sense of apathy had descended over everything, buffering him from even his senses so that he experienced a tasteless, colorless world through a tunnel. Almost like popping a couple of quarters into those binoculars down at the Pier and watching the world go by—

“Keep it together, moron,” Casey said, shaking Chuck’s shoulder. “You can have your panic attack when we get out of here. Until then, keep it together, or so help me, God, I’ll—”

They reached a corner. Casey held Chuck in place so that he could check. When the coast proved clear, he turned. “Pain,” he finished. “Lots of pain. Now, move it.”

Chuck decided maybe he should listen. He might not feel it now, but Casey’s concept of “pain. Lots of pain” would probably leave bruises, which would ache when feeling returned. He bit hard on the inside of his cheek and was absurdly pleased to feel it—until it started to hurt. “Ow.”

“What now? No, wait, I don’t want to know.”

From the sound of it, Casey was hauling him closer to the main bay of the warehouse, where the gunfight was still ongoing, if a bit slower. The rapid bursts of gunfire had become random gunshots ringing out every few seconds, one at a time. Chuck wondered where on earth they kept their endless supply of ammunition because this was honestly getting a bit ridiculous. He kept his head ducked forward, trying to make as small a target as possible, and stuck close to Casey—not that the other man gave him much choice.

They met another hallway, made a turn. Chuck wondered if Sarah was okay. If she had found Bryce. If they were making out—in the middle of a gun battle? The logical half of his brain scoffed at him.

“Wait here,” Casey said suddenly, halting Chuck. Without even a warning look to make sure the CIA agent would obey him, he took off, gun held at the ready. Chuck squinted into the darkness—there was something on the ground up ahead. Something that looked suspiciously like a body.

Morbid curiosity forced him forward as Casey knelt by the body to check for a pulse. Chuck blinked and he himself was standing over the body. “Who is it?” he hissed at Casey.

The other man jumped and whirled, his gun up in the ready position. When he saw that it was just Chuck, he lowered the gun with a grunt. “What part of ‘wait here’ was too complicated for you, moron?”

But Chuck was too busy gazing at the body on the floor. A convenient patch of moonlight from the quarter moon lay right across a pair of unfocused blue eyes, staring from beyond the confines of life. 

As luck would have it, the flash hit him then.

He came back to reality only because Casey snapped his fingers in his face. Instead of replying to the gruff, “You okay, Bartowski?” he stared down at the body at his feet. “Stopping Bryce didn’t do a damn bit of good,” he whispered, his voice hollow and lifeless. “Not a damn bit of good.”

And kneeling down, he reached out a shaking hand to close the eyes of one Chaim Isaiah Bernstein, known to the world at large only as Fidget. Were it not for the gory void in the middle of the man’s forehead, he would have looked at peace.

Chuck knew better. “Not one damned bit of good,” he said for good measure, and rose to his feet.


	14. At the End of the Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We need others. We need others to love and we need to be loved by them. There is no doubt that without it, we too, like the infant left alone, would cease to grow, cease to develop, choose madness and even death. — _Leo F. Buscaglia_

**19 OCTOBER 2007**   
**CROWN VICTORIA**   
**02:14 PDT**

Casey shoved Chuck into the front seat, slammed the door, and hustled around the car to the driver’s seat. He hadn’t precisely been walking on eggshells around the other man, but Chuck would have admitted, were he capable, that there had been nary a “moron” or a “numb-nuts” heard since they’d discovered Fidget’s body.

The noise of the engine turning over startled Chuck. “What are you doing?” 

“Getting you out of here. Buckle your seat-belt.”

“We can’t!” Chuck bolted upright, his stupor forgotten. “Sarah! She’s still in there with Peyman and Carina…and Bryce.”

Casey rolled his eyes and lifted his watch to his lips. “Guinevere, what’s your twenty?”

It took a moment, but Sarah’s voice crackled to life from the comm unit. “Situation in the warehouse is secure. Waiting for clean-up teams. Take Stargazer and get him out of here.”

Stargazer, Chuck realized. His code-name. So she wasn’t alone—but she hadn’t used a distress phrase. He had a vision of Sarah standing over the inert bodies of Peyman Alahi and his men, gun pointed straight at the ringleader and her hair blowing in the wind.

He tried to savor that vision. It was much better than the others blitzing his mind.

“Roger that, Guinevere.” Casey put the car into drive as Chuck collapsed back against the seat. Guinevere, Stargazer, and…

“Casey, what’s your call-sign? For the radio?”

“Bourne.”

Chuck goggled. “Like Jason Bourne? How come you get a cool super-spy name, but I have to make do with some daydreaming—”

“Not Jason Bourne. Color-Sergeant F. Bourne. Now shut up and let me drive.”

Chuck would have rather have kept talking. When his mouth was moving, he was less likely to flash through the horrific images he’d witnessed in the warehouse. Or, more morbidly, the contents of his last flash, which had spilled every bit of data the government had on Fidget into him. And there was quite a lot of info on Fidget Bernstein. Chuck probably knew him better than his own mother at this point.

He wished brain-bleach had been invented. He wished he could control when the Intersect flashed. He wished he’d never met the doomed Fidget Bernstein. He wished even more that he’d never met Carina Miller, that she’d never climbed into his car and taken him hostage.

Hell, at this point, he even wished he’d never met Bryce Larkin.

“Are you going to sit there all night, Bartowski? We’re here.”

Chuck blinked. Casey had pulled into the parking lot of their building, and had turned off the car. He’d taken his seatbelt off, but he held his keys, twirling them around one thick finger.

“Oh, right,” Chuck said, and climbed out of the car.

He quickly came to regret that. The human body could only take so much abuse before it began to rebel, and all of Chuck’s limbs went on strike before he’d so much as reached the elevator. He gritted his teeth and forced himself forward, trying to walk normally. By the time Casey unlocked the door, Chuck’s body was one giant tremor, and he wanted nothing more than to dump himself onto the first semi-comfortable flat surface and lose a few hours to the oblivion of sleep.

He sat down on the edge of the couch instead, put his elbows on his knees, and settled to wait, facing the front door.

Casey, already peeling tactical gear, paused in his bedroom doorway. “As always I’m not sure I want to know, but what are you doing?”

“Waiting for Sarah.” Chuck kept his gaze on the door.

“Walker’s going to be wrapped up in site clean-up for hours, and if she’s smart, she’ll go straight home and sleep,” Casey said. “Do yourself a favor. Go upstairs and get eight straight. But for the love of all that is holy, shower first. Plenty of time to yell at you in the morning.”

The word shower triggered Chuck’s sense of smell—he reeked to high heaven and back. So he went without protest. It took him four times as long as usual to shower. He couldn’t seem to keep a good grip on the soap. It kept squirting through his shaky hands, leaving little divots of soap in the cracks between the tiles. Chuck had no doubts that Casey, who believed in military precision in everything up to and including living quarters, would have something to say about that when he saw the damage. He didn’t care. He stayed under the blistering stream of water until his skin had shriveled and he felt weaker at the knees than usual. Then, and only then, did he step out and wrap a towel around himself.

He came out, dressed in pajama pants and a T-shirt, to find Casey working at the kitchen island. Wordlessly, the other man put a plate in front of one of the stools and pointed at it. _Eat_.

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a baggie of chips. Hardly the dinner of champions. Still, under other circumstances, Chuck would have found the meal touching. Now, he just numbly began to eat. When he finished the sandwich, Casey placed another in front of him and sat down with his own food.

“Talked to Walker,” he said after Chuck had made inroads into the second sandwich. “Scene’s secure.”

“Did she get Bryce?”

“Wily bastard slipped out the back before she could nab him. Or so she says.” Casey scowled at his own baggie of chips.

“And Carina? Did Carina make it?”

“Pretty sure that whatever Carina is, she’s impossible to kill.” Casey rolled his eyes at Chuck’s impatient look. “Carina survived. Didn’t even get shot.”

“And do they…” Chuck put the uneaten remains of his sandwich back on the plate and stared at the countertop. “Do they know who shot Fidget?” 

Was it Carina? He longed to ask, but asking somehow might make it real. Even worse, had it been Bryce?

“Walker says he got caught in the crossfire.”

“Then why was he in the hallway?” Chuck demanded, anger flickering through him. It was the first emotion besides horror to fully penetrate the semi-fugue state. “If he got caught in the crossfire, he’d have been in the main bay with all of the other victims. And a gunshot between the eyes? That’s a pretty damn lucky shot, don’t you think?”

Casey finished his sandwich and wiped his hands on his napkin. “Your first death?” he asked, in a tone usually used to inquire about the weather.

Chuck felt the eaten portion of his sandwich threaten to make a second appearance. He forced it back. “No,” he said, and blinked when he realized that he had meant it. Where had that come from? His first death had been the guard. Hadn’t it? Technically, Casey was asking about Fidget, but the guard could be included in that category—

 _Thwbt. Th wbt_. _Two patches of red across a T-shirt, morbid badges. The unmistakable stench of cordite._

“No?” Casey asked. “You ever watch somebody else die, Bartowski?”

Chuck blinked slowly. Why did his head suddenly weigh twice as much as usual?

_The guard’s eyes were still open when he toppled to the ground. Sightless, open, staring. Accusing._

“I don’t know,” he said, surprised again when every word came out the honest truth.

_Thwbt. Another bullet to the head, for good measure. Small caliber, just an innocent hole between the eyes—it had even missed the glasses—_

“Bartowski?”

Chuck blinked a third time and shook away the echoes. “What?”

Casey just gave him a look.

His head still felt far too heavy, and now he had a spate of new images running through his brain. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s a first.” Casey crossed to a cabinet and withdrew a bottle—Johnnie Walker Black. Comfort in a bottle, Chuck figured, raising both eyebrows when Casey got out not one glass but two. He set one of the glasses in front of Chuck, poured a generous three fingers. “Don’t tell Walker.”

“Thanks, Casey,” Chuck said, once again surprised that he meant it. He knocked back half of the glass. The burn was cleansing, cathartic, painful as hell. He didn’t cough.

“I’m going to kip. You get eight straight, Bartowski, or it’s both of our asses on the line for the midday briefing.” Casey polished the last bit of his own scotch and set the glass in the sink. “Walker’s going back to her place. She said to say she’ll see you in the morning. Now go get some damn sleep.”

He closed his door behind him just a hair harder than necessary. Chuck toyed briefly with the idea of staying out on the couch, sitting and watching the door until Sarah arrived, just so that he could prove Casey wrong. But what use would that do? He couldn’t will Sarah to come over with just the power of his mind. And there was no use calling her—for what? He was a full grown man. He shouldn’t have to run crying to Sarah Walker every time there was some little problem, like a mewling kid that couldn’t tie his own shoes.

He’d just have to man up.

Chuck finished the whisky in one final slug and went upstairs, crawling into the bed. He pulled the covers up to his chin and tried desperately, desperately to shut off his brain.

No such luck.

He could almost physically feel the mattress move as his demons climbed into bed with him. Instead of the usual faces, however, these ones had new masks: Jill Roberts. Carina Miller. A dead guard. Bryce Larkin. And finally, last but definitely not least, Fidget Bernstein, wearing a red hole in the middle of his forehead like some twisted, morbid bindi.

It was going to be a long night.

>

**19 OCTOBER 2007**   
**BACHELOR PAD**   
**10:37 PDT**

Chuck felt something brush his cheek. “Five more minutes, El.”

Again, something soft, something light against his cheek. He moved an irritable hand to bat it away—and something grabbed his wrist.

“Okay, okay, Ellie. I’m up. I’m up. Geez.”

He shifted his grip without opening his eyes, grabbing the hand like he always used to as a kid and twining his fingers through—wait, that was definitely not Ellie’s hand. Ellie’s hand certainly didn’t have this many calluses.

Chuck thanked his lucky stars that the hand was at least feminine.

Still, he took a second before he opened his eyes. “My, Casey, what girly hands you have. And I must say, the blonde hair is really working for you. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were Sarah.”

The solemn look shifted to a smile.

“That’s better,” Chuck said, but he didn’t smile back. “A much better way to wake up, overall.”

“You’re eloquent this morning,” Sarah said as she gently freed her hand from Chuck’s grip. She crossed her arms and pillowed her chin on her wrists, staring down at him.

Chuck shrugged without sitting up. Every part of his body ached, either from exhaustion or from the hell he’d insisted on putting it through lately. But it beat being cold all the time. “I had a lot of time to think between the bouts of insomnia and the nightmares.”

Instantly, Sarah’s smile faded, and Chuck regretted having said anything.

“So let’s talk about this,” Sarah said before Chuck could make any more mood-killing statements. 

He attempted innocence. “What about?”

“Chuck, you’re sleeping on the floor.” Sarah pinned him with the no-nonsense stare. “Not only that, but you wedged yourself in a corner when you have this nice big bed up here.” She thumped the stripped-down mattress. She was lying on her stomach across the bed, her arms resting on the edge so that she could look down at him over the side. The pose was strangely reminiscent of a teenage girl, and hard to reconcile with the visions of Sarah looking fierce and deadly in a set of TDU’s, a gun clutched in her hand. So many personas for one woman. How did she juggle it all?

“Too much space,” Chuck said, and pushed his poor body into a sitting position. “Couldn’t sleep—it was easier on the floor. Blocked in.”

“You didn’t have any trouble sleeping in Athens or on the couch at Ellie’s, and there was just as much space there.”

Chuck closed his eyes and rested his aching head back against the cool wall. About four hours before, he’d given up the ghost and had crawled with all of his bedclothes into the narrow space between his queen-sized mattress and the wall. It reminded him of his bunk in the bunker, of how he would burrow each night into his sleeping back and try not to think about tomorrow. Then, and only then, had he gotten a few precious hours of sleep.

“What time is our briefing?” he asked, forcing himself to focus on the subject at hand.

“You’ve got awhile. Here.” Sarah propped herself up on her elbows so that she could rummage behind her for something. She handed Chuck an icepack. Chuck took it and studiously avoided eye contact with the view down the front of her tank top. He winced when he set the icepack against the bump on his forehead.

Sarah glanced at the floor again, biting her lip. Something was clearly bothering her, but Chuck didn’t have the energy to press the issue. So he sat, holding the ice pack until his fingers hurt from the cold, and waited. “Pretty clever,” Sarah finally said, nodding over at the whiteboard that Chuck had propped up between the closet and the end of the bed. It formed the partition he’d needed for his own psychological comfort. “But now I’m wondering if we should just requisition you a smaller sleeping space, like a box. Or maybe a coffin? You could go goth.”

“I’d rather have a casket.”

“What’s the difference?”

“More foot room.” 

“Um, okay.” Sarah levered herself up. “You should get ready for the day, so I’ll leave you alone. Are you feeling okay?”

He’d maybe felt worse five times in his entire life, but Chuck forced a smile. “I’m fine.”

“If you say so. Can you be downstairs in thirty? We need to debrief from last night before we report into Washington. And Chuck?

“Be very careful what you say about Bryce.”

Chuck stared at her until she’d vanished downstairs, the icepack in his hand forgotten. 

**19 OCTOBER 2007**   
**BACHELOR PAD**   
**12:47 PDT**

“And that is all you have to say, Agent Bartowski?”

“That’s what happened, ma’am.” Chuck swallowed, hating that—on top of everything else—his throat had gone drier than the Gobi Desert the moment General Beckman and Director Graham had popped up onscreen. “Major Casey and Agent Walker found me, Casey got me out of there while Agent Walker went off to secure ex-Agent Larkin. I didn’t make contact with ex-Agent Miller or any of the hostiles after separating from ex-Agent Larkin.”

“Very well.” General Beckman looked displeased, but Chuck had never seen her appear otherwise. “We have all of your statements and we’ve confirmed with the clean-up squad that the situation with Alahi is contained. Mr. Alahi himself has already been transferred to a federal prison for holding until his trial can begin.”

A picture of Peyman’s mug shot filled the monitors. He looked haggard, worn out—exactly how Chuck himself felt.

“Agent Bartowski,” Director Graham said, “in light of recent events, we believe it prudent that you remain in the presence of Major Casey and Agent Walker for the next seventy-two hours.”

Chuck kept his neutral expression up, but inwardly, he groaned. He’d been looking forward to seeing Morgan’s new place. Oh, well. They’d just have to move their game night to the Bachelor Pad instead. “If you think that’s best, Director,” he said, and winced when his phone rang. He heard Casey’s growl, saw Sarah’s eyes widen, but he still pulled the chirping device from his pocket. When he checked the view-screen, he blanched white. “Excuse me, I really have to take this.”

“ _Bartowski_ ,” Casey said under his breath, his eyes bulging.

Chuck gave him a helpless look. “I’m sorry, General, Director. It’s just, it’s Agent Davenport, and—”

“Ah. Say no more, Agent Bartowski. We can finish this briefing without you.”

Chuck cast a grateful look at the CIA Director, who was marginally more cuddly than the General, and fled the room to outside. He pressed talk. “Uh, hey, Agent Davenport, how’s it going? What? Y-yeah, things here are great—no, I’m fine. Wait a second, how on earth do you know that?”

Twenty minutes later, Sarah slipped out the front door. “Briefing over?” Chuck asked without looking back.

“For a few minutes now. When you didn’t come back, I thought I’d come and—”

“Find me curled up in a fetal position, sucking on my thumb?” Chuck failed to put humor in his tone, though he twisted his face into a smile before he looked back at her. “Nope. Only mildly sweating. A light sheen, if you will. Which is perfectly understandable, California being somewhat warmer than Siberia and all.”

“Progress,” Sarah said.

“Not really. I’ve spent the last few minutes chanting that you and Casey are right inside and if I scream, you’ll come kill the big, bad space monsters for me. Pathetic for a grown man, right?”

Sarah finally stepped up to join him at the railing, overlooking the quadrangle below. “Considering that you were stuck underground and can count the number of people you saw on one hand…I’d say that’s not pathetic at all. Give it time.”

“One thing at a time?” Chuck asked, his smile growing a little more real.

“It’s good advice for a reason. What did Agent Davenport want?”

“For me to call her Gwen.” Chuck turned his attention back to the quad, which was empty—everybody else in the complex was probably at work, he figured. “News of our recent adventures worked their way up the grapevine.”

“Really?” Sarah shifted to mirror his stance. “That shouldn’t have happened. Your name should have been removed completely—”

“It was, sort of. But Gwen put everything together anyway. Did you know that they’re calling me Carmichael in Washington? And nobody’s sure if I’m NSA, CIA, or just a ghost?”

“You said you liked the name.”

Chuck vaguely remembered mentioning his old Bond-style name during their hours-long dinner in Thessaloniki when they’d been waiting until they could board the ferry. “Well, thanks.”

“No problem.”

“Either way, Gwen caught chatter about our stunt with Peyman and our little jaunt to Chinatown, and she’s less than pleased. Technically, I’m supposed to stay in an ‘analyst’ position, which means avoiding guns, knives, and assorted danger. If it’s going to make me scream, the general consensus is that I should stay away from it.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. It really depends on what kind of screaming you’re doing.”

That surprised a laugh out of him. “Ha,” he said, finally ripping his gaze away from the courtyard and smiling back at Sarah. “Does that mean you’re offer—wow, and please forget I even started to say that. Talk about ignoring professional boundaries.”

Sarah said absolutely nothing, but her smile had lost all of its splendor.

“Anyway,” Chuck said, flushing bright red and staring down again, “Gwen might be coming out to assess our situation for herself. I’m supposed to tell you thank-you from her, for sending your reports in so quickly.”

Sarah shrugged. “Least I could do, seeing as she’s the main force keeping you out of a bunker.”

“Yeah, and one of the reasons I’m going into therapy.” Chuck’s expression turned grim. His fingers gripped the ironwork railing tightly as he straightened up. “Effective next week, I’m meeting with an agency shrink. Congratulate me, I just became an ex-prisoner of war. The ‘enemy’ stuck me in a bunker for five years of solitary confinement. I’m getting my dossier messengered to me today.”

“A therapist would be good for you, Chuck.”

“Sure.” Chuck unclamped a hand to scratch the back of his neck. “I’ll get to spill all about my fake life to a therapist who’ll turn around and report everything to the next head on the totem pole so that I can be psycho-analyzed even more than I already am.”

“Or,” and Sarah put a hand on his arm, “you could look at it as a way to beat back some of those demons.”

It was like she’d been in the bedroom with him the night before, when his demons had been tangible personifications, crowding around him so closely that he’d eventually crawled onto the floor to get away from them. Thinking of those demons brought up a question that shamed him only because it had been the driving factor behind his insomnia. It was inconsequential next to the fact that he’d witnessed one death and stumbled upon another. But it had kept him up nevertheless.

“Sarah,” he said, pushing the words past the lump that had once been his throat, “Carina said something yesterday.”

A shutter fell over Sarah’s features. The expression of concern shifted to a wariness he hated, and her eyes once again became unreadable. He’d probably get more of a response from a cardboard cutout.

“What did Carina say this time? Before you say anything, you should know Carina really can’t be trusted. She’s unpredictable and she’s always working an angle.”

“It was about you and Bryce,” Chuck said. “Earlier, you told me to be very careful about what I said about Bryce. Are you trying to protect him because you two were—”

“Hey, you two!”

Both Chuck and Sarah jolted and looked over the railing. Carina waved gaily back, wearing a short black trenchcoat that thankfully covered more than her top the night before had. Had she sneaked in or had she strolled right on through? Chuck couldn’t claim to know. “Can I come up?” she called.

Sarah regained her composure first. “Uh, sure. Elevator’s over there.”

“What is she doing here?” Chuck hissed when Carina had headed toward the elevator. “Why isn’t she in federal custody?”

“Relax, Chuck. She apologized for the mess last night. And she wanted to apologize to you in person.”

“She had a gun to my neck!”

Sarah’s expression darkened. “She didn’t want to kill you, she just wanted to mess with me. It’s why she couldn’t take out all of Alahi’s men by herself last night. She didn’t think protecting you in a shoot-out would be too good a time.”

“Your friends have an interesting interpretation of a good time,” Chuck said. He shifted his stance so that instead of leaning forward against the railing, he could prop himself against the front wall of the apartment and cross his arms. It felt easier to glare that way.

Sarah rested one hip against the railing and crossed her arms right back at him. “I’m sorry, what was it you were doing when Carina found you?”

Chuck’s jaw firmed. “That wasn’t a good time for anybody.”

Unless you called seeing your ex and getting your heart ripped out through your nose as a “good time.” In which case, the whole night should be declared a huge barrel of laughs.

“Stalking your ex, Chuck? Really?”

“Hey, at least my ex isn’t—” Movement to Chuck’s right made him leap and flail about in a poor imitation of a judo stance. By the time he ceased moving, Carina and Sarah were watching him with oddly identical expressions of suppressed amusement. He tried to cover by running his hands through his hair. He scowled. “Great. You. Welcome to the Bachelor Pad. Would you like the grand tour before or after you kidnap me? I’m sorry—’take me hostage.’ Technicalities, you know.”

“Aw, Chuckie, c’mon. No hard feelings here.” Carina reached up to ruffle his hair, laughing when he flinched away. 

Chuck’s eyes held no humor. “Did you shoot Fidget?”

He expected a flat, honest answer. What he didn’t expect was for Carina to roll her eyes and mutter, “I wish.” In a louder voice, she said, “Peyman’s men got him before I could. I was just going to shoot him somewhere non-lethal, teach him a lesson.”

Chuck added Carina to his list of people to not piss off, just after Sarah and before Casey. “Why was he in the hallway?”

“Because I didn’t want his blood going out everywhere and giving away my position.” Carina crossed her arms and leaned her shoulder against the wall next to Chuck so that she could watch both him and Sarah. “It’s bad form to shoot a guy in the head when he’s that smart. He was scum, but he could’ve been useful at a future date.”

It was the closest thing to remorse he would receive. And for some reason, knowing that made him feel better. Something loosened in his chest; he stood up a little straighter. “Thanks for playing straight with me.”

“No problem. Thanks for convincing Sarah to tell ‘em to give me my job back.”

Chuck squinted. “What? I didn’t—”

Sarah sprang forward and, to Chuck’s surprise, wrapped one of her arms through his. He gave her a what-are-you-doing look, but she was too busy beaming at Carina. “Did you want to say good-bye to Casey? He’s inside, and you barely got to see him while you were here.”

“Casey would prefer I didn’t. Tell him we’ll always have Bogota?”

“First Prague, now Bogota?” Chuck wondered. “Is there any place you two haven’t desecrated?”

Carina just laughed at that. When her cell beeped, she pulled it out and smirked. “Looks like my ride’s here. Walk me to my car, you two?”

Though Chuck had no desire to step into all of that open space, Sarah had latched on pretty tightly to his arm, giving him no choice but to go along. They took the stairs down rather than the elevator. “You two seem to be on good terms,” he said as they descended. He’d never have believed it. No way would Sarah have let Carina off the hook after getting him kidnapped the night before.

“That’s because we spent an hour beating each other to a pulp,” Carina said, matter-of-factly. “It’s very therapeutic.”

Chuck looked from one gorgeous, unmarked head to the other. Not a hair was out of place. “Right,” he said. “Because you two clearly came back from a brawl. Uh-huh. Pull the other one, will you?”

“Chuck.” Sarah paused and glanced around to make sure nobody was around. Without another word, she lifted the hem of her tank-top.

“Ouch,” Chuck said, wincing. The purpling splotch just below her ribs looked far worse than anything he’d collected over the past couple of days. He glared at Carina. “You did that?”

“My, my, my.” Carina smirked. “Sounds like Sarah Walker’s found herself a champion.”

Sarah rolled her eyes at her friend.

“How come I can’t tell that you two beat on each other?” Chuck demanded. “Your faces look perfect.”

“First thing you learn in spy school is all about makeup.” They strolled through the entrance gate toward the street as Carina smirked over at Chuck. “It’s really handy for first dates and Halloween alike. Ooh, look, there’s my ride. Just a sec, Colin.” Carina waved at a vintage Mustang Shelby. “Really must fly, but I wanted to say my good-byes before I left.”

She hugged Sarah first, murmuring something into the blonde’s ear that had Chuck’s ears perking up—especially since Sarah replied in fashion. He kept his expression neutral until Carina turned to him. “I’m sorry,” she said, actually sounding like she meant it, “that I got you involved last night.”

He could stand up to anything but sincerity. Even though Chuck called himself a sap and knew he was likely being played, he sighed and extended a solemn hand toward Carina. “We got out of there alive, so no harm, no foul. We’ll just pretend the whole thing never happened and never, ever do it again, deal?”

“Deal.” Carina ignored the hand to give him a hug. She stood on her tip-toes to whisper into his ear, “Take care of my friend, or I’ll kill you. Got me?”

Chuck’s voice rose half an octave. “Understood.”

He squeaked and scrambled backward when Carina let him go. “Look me up next time you’re in Miami,” she told them. Chuck and Sarah watched the redhead saunter away toward the classic muscle car. 

“That her boyfriend?” Chuck asked as Carina draped herself over the driver.

Sarah shook her head. “Probably just a mark.”

“Poor schmuck,” Chuck decided. “Carina’s going to make his life hell. Though I wouldn’t mind being used that way for—Ow! What is with you and punching people?” He rubbed the abused spot, glaring, though it hadn’t hurt. “First Carina grabs my ass, now you’re hitting me. I’m just about fed up with women, you know that?”

Sarah’s look clearly stated what she wasn’t going to say: you started it.

Before she could go back inside, Chuck touched her arm, lightly. It was enough to make her tense. 

Chuck just stuffed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders forward. He had to say it now, he knew, or it would never be said. “What did you mean, be careful what I say about Bryce? Are you trying to protect him because you two were partners?” He took a deep breath. “Or because you two were more than partners?”

It really was amazing just how quickly the temperature could plummet. Sarah didn’t move, but the entire world with all of its cursed people and all of its bloody space vanished, leaving him all alone with an ice queen. An ice queen that had previously been his partner and protector. The fury on her face alone could cure the world of its melting ice-caps problem.

“Where the hell,” she said, her voice almost guttural, “do you get off asking that?”

Chuck had to fight every fiber of his being not to deploy the Morgan, an old standby when dealing with the irate female. Through sheer force of will, he kept his feet planted. He had to know. “It’s an honest question, Sarah. Are you trying to protect Bryce because you were in love with him? He’s a traitor, Sarah.”

Sarah gave him a disgusted look and half-turned. Chuck held his breath.

Eons stretched before she answered. Chuck’s panicking mind pictured civilizations being born, dying in a blaze of glory. New planets. Supernovas. 

Finally, Sarah said, her voice far too measured, “His country wasn’t the only thing he betrayed when he blew that compound.”

Chuck tried to take a deep breath. It didn’t work. The same feeling from the car the night before, when Carina had declared Bryce and Sarah a little more than partners, threatened to crush his chest. So it was true. She hadn’t denied it. 

Breathing suddenly became impossible.

Sarah startled him by grabbing his sleeve and yanking. They headed down the sidewalk, two frigid feet of space between them. To a casual observer, Sarah looked calm, relaxed. Chuck knew enough to see the tension stretching her into a whipcord, ready to strike. She still had the ice queen face on, but he could see emotions boiling beneath the surface. Was this the part where she dragged him into an abandoned grove and killed him?

Lord, he hoped not.

When they were a suitable distance away from the apartment complex, heading into the park, Sarah began to mutter without looking at him or really moving her lips. “I’m only going to say this once, Chuck, so listen up. Bryce and me…it was complicated. And quite frankly, none of your damn business.”

“I—”

“Shut up, and let me finish. Bryce betrayed more than his country when he blew that compound. He betrayed me. You’re supposed to trust your partner when you can’t trust anybody else, and he betrayed me.”

_Don’t ever trust anybody, Chuck. Rule number one of being a spy._

Maybe Sarah and Bryce weren’t that alike after all.

Sarah, meanwhile, hadn’t finished. “But more importantly, he betrayed you.”

“What?” This had Chuck stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. Without looking back, Sarah grabbed his arm and hauled, pulling him into motion. “What are you talking about?”

“When I said be careful of what you say about Bryce, I meant that you’re still under suspicion because he blew up the compound. People were injured badly that night, and you—”

“And I helped Bryce get those heat-scans,” Chuck said, his fists clenching. 

“And you’re not in the clear, not remotely. They’re still watching you like a hawk.” Sarah apparently figured they were far enough away from the apartment. She all but shoved Chuck onto a park bench, but instead of sitting down herself, she stood in front of him, her fists clenched. “It’s awfully convenient, isn’t it, that the Intersect would go to you, the guy who helped Bryce out.”

Indignation made Chuck sputter. “I’m innocent! You know that!”

“Exactly.” Sarah folded her arms and glared. “I know that. But they’re going to need convincing. So, like I said, be careful what you say about Bryce.”

“I was worried,” Chuck blurted out before his brain could think to halt his mouth, “at first. That you and Bryce were working together to pass the Inter—to sell me to the highest bidder.” Sarah’s eyes widened, first shock then fury. “But I’m not anymore! I swear, I stopped thinking that before we even got to Radomsko, okay? Except last night…I couldn’t sleep, and it was making me crazy, thinking about the things Carina said, and knowing Bryce got away again. I couldn’t help it. It just made sense that maybe you two were working together because you were in love or something. He’s been there every step of the way, Sarah. He was in Athens, he left that note in my pocket—”

“What note?” Sarah demanded.

“It’s not important right now—” 

Sarah leaned down so that she was right in Chuck’s face. “ _What note_?”

She was about two seconds away from grabbing a random body part and squeezing. To spare his abused body any further torture, Chuck shoveled both hands through his hair. “It was a name. The first night I got back, I had a panic attack. I took off my jacket in the waiting room at the hospital, and when I came back to fetch it, there was a note in my pocket. It was weird because I always keep things in my pants pockets, not my jacket pockets—”

“What name?”

“Phillip Dartmoor. Does that ring any bells?”

He could see Sarah carefully, systematically searching her memory, but she shook her head. “Did you flash on it?”

“No. I’m going to run a database search on it, on my computer.” Chuck shook his head and tilted forward to rub his hands over his face, oblivious to the fact that Sarah had to step backwards or be head-butted in the stomach. “And Bryce showed up last night like some avenging angel to get me out of there, and it only made sense if he knew about my tracker, but only you and Casey know about that—”

“Or he could have been following you,” Sarah pointed out quietly, finally giving in and sitting next to him on the park bench. “Let’s face it, Chuck, you wouldn’t exactly notice a tail.”

Chuck peered sideways at her through his hands. “How about you teach me that, first thing Monday?” 

“Done.”

“So if Bryce has been following me, and the two of you aren’t secretly in cahoots, that actually makes more sense. Especially given what he said about you and Casey.”

Sarah shook her head. “You know what? I don’t actually want to know what he said.”

“Probably for the best. But I hope you see why I was worried.” 

Sarah sighed. “I do.”

Chuck lowered his hands and wiped his palms on his jeans. They’d wandered into the heart of the park. It wasn’t brimming, but there were enough people enjoying the mid-October warmth to make him cautious. Still, overall, it wasn’t terrible. “What’s his endgame, Sarah?”

“I don’t know.”

“Last night he made it seem like he was…looking out for me.”

“He could be protecting you for his own interests,” Sarah said, her voice dull. “He could be, as you said, prepping you to be sold to the highest bidder. There’s no way to read his mind when he’s decided to play something close to the vest. You know that.”

Chuck nodded. “Yeah. I know that.”

“So even though it makes you feel better to think that maybe your friend might just be looking out for you, remember that he probably has ulterior motives. And keep your guard up.”

Chuck scowled. “I hate this.”

“I know.”

“I just want to know why he did it, what he’s doing now.” He hated, more than anything, that he would never look at his best friend, his college wingman, his old roommate the same way ever again. He’d never be able to look at Bryce and not see that dead guard’s unseeing stare, or the terror on Fidget’s face before Chuck had deflected the gun.

“Frankly, a lot about this life sucks,” Sarah said, resting her elbows on the back of the park bench so that it looked like two friends relaxing in the sunlight. “There’s a lot of hurry up and wait, a lot of not knowing, a lot of guess-work that never pays off. You’ll hurt people, and you’ll tell yourself it’s okay because it’s for the good of the country, but at the end of the day, the country won’t know the first thing about anything and there will still be a hurt person out there. You need to have a thick skin, and you need to learn to be able to cope.”

Chuck stared straight ahead, letting her words run through his mind. Like Casey, there wasn’t going to be a “there, there, it’s all okay” speech. No band-aids applied, no kissing the boo-boo to make it all better. What they did now was real with actual, tangible consequences. No turning back.

It made Chuck vaguely ill, but he couldn’t help but appreciate the beauty of such a straight answer.

“I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say at a time,” he said, finally turning to look at her.

Sarah didn’t meet his gaze. “I can’t take credit. My mentor at Quantico gave me that speech pretty much word for word. It’s something you need to hear.”

“Does that make you my Mr. Miyagi?”

There was a long pause before Sarah answered. “Honestly, I…wouldn’t know.”

Chuck goggled at her. “With kung fu moves like yours, how can you have missed out on ‘The Karate Kid’ all these years? That’s it, we’re watching that tonight. Consider it a spy mission.”

Tension eased out of Sarah’s shoulders as she laughed, a genuine chuckle. “We can’t tonight. You’re coming over for dinner, remember? Ellie’s cooking for all of us.”

“Oh, right.” Twin knots of nerves and excitement clustered in his stomach at the thought. He would get to see his sister later. He could walk over there now, if he chose. Just drop in. She wasn’t half a planet away anymore. He would get to eat Ellie’s cooking again. Chuck had missed his sister worse than he would have missed a severed limb, but after years of MREs, he could privately admit that he missed her cooking just as much. His mouth began to water. “Well, we’ll have to do it soon. Because this is a grievous error and must be fixed as soon as possible.”

“If you say so.” Sarah shifted her attention to the landscape, or maybe to where a group of frat boy types had started up a game of ultimate Frisbee.

Even so, Chuck caught the look before she hid it completely. “What is it?” he asked, unconsciously shifting toward her.

“Nothing.” Sarah twisted a smile onto her face, but it didn’t reach her eyes, so the move was entirely worthless. “Just thinking that by the time we’re done with this assignment, I’ll be a complete geek.”

“Nerd,” Chuck corrected. “We prefer the term nerd. But that’s not really it.” When Sarah turned to him, surprised, he shrugged. “You’re not precisely an open book, and I doubt you’ll ever be, but give me some credit. I have had plenty of opportunities to study the Tao of Le Walker—or Walker-Tao if you prefer—and something’s definitely up.”

“Nothing’s up,” Sarah said. But Chuck watched an internal debate take place anyway. He figured this was one of those times to sit back and wait rather than trying to talk it out of her. Finally, Sarah’s debate came to an end. “I owe you an apology.”

“For?” This was news.

“For almost taking your head off back at the curb back there. You brought up some very valid concerns and I nearly severed three of your major arteries and punched you in the neck.”

“That’s…oddly specific,” Chuck said, hoping that his sudden need to sit back and lean away wasn’t too obvious. “Apology accepted. Can I say I’m glad you didn’t kill me? I’m fond of my arteries. And look, maybe I should apologize, too. Questioning if you had a sexual relationship with Bryce was way over the line. It’s not my business, really. So I’m sorry.”

Though he longed to ask. Even if it wasn’t his business, he was fairly burning up with curiosity. 

_A couple of good-looking people like Bryce and Sarah, all those high-octane situations, life and death day in and day out, how do you expect them not to get together?_

Only the reminder that they were mature adults and that Sarah could kill him with her pinky kept him silent. Realistically, he’d probably never know. Just one of the many facets of Sarah Walker that he wouldn’t ever really get to see.

But one of the facets of Sarah Walker that he was glad he did get to see was her smile. Which she gave him right now. “Apology accepted, though it wasn’t necessary. You more than explained yourself, Chuck.”

“I’m glad.”

“C’mon, let’s head back inside. Casey’s probably wondering if Carina’s killed us and dumped our bodies in the ocean or something.”

But Chuck waited a few seconds before he forced his aching body off of the bench. “Whatever happened to the diamond?” he asked as they strolled along, things considerably less frosty on this go-round.

“Messenger picked it up this morning. I made a few calls to help Carina out.”

“I get that, but why did she thank _me_?”

“Well, I can’t have her think I’ve gone soft, can I?” Sarah, to his utter surprise, threaded her arm through his again. “That would just be sloppy.”

Chuck gave her a droll look. “If you left any bruises on her anywhere near as massive as that lovely mark you yourself are sporting, the last thing she can accuse you of is going soft. Think she’ll be back?”

Sarah pretended to consider this. “Probably. She’s got an radar for when life is getting too boring or predictable.”

“Fantastic.”

They headed back toward the apartment, two friends enjoying a sunny afternoon in the park together. Chuck kept his hands in his pockets, trying not to let on that he was focusing every part of his being on the arm Sarah had wrapped through his. Hard to believe that the so-called Bunker Boy had come even this far, though he knew he had miles to go before…just before. Thinking about what lay ahead wearied him to no end, but for right now, he could enjoy the sunshine and the companionship.

A thought from their good-byes to Carina occurred to him as they headed in the gates to the apartment. “So,” he said, “where’d you learn to speak Polish?”

Sarah just smirked. 


	15. Why Don’t You Love Me Anymore, Sarah Walker?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying. — _Oscar Wilde_

# PART III: ATLAS

**30 OCTOBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: UPSTAIRS**   
**11:02 PDT**

Chuck didn’t glance up when the Scooby door opened, even if it meant that Sarah was now in the room. He held up a finger and continued to scroll through the screens in front of him, eyes narrowing occasionally as if he were trying to instigate a flash. He had maybe thirty seconds before Sarah’s patience dried up and he wanted to get this last screen checked, just to make sure he wasn’t missing anything—

“Got a minute?” Sarah asked.

Thirty seconds had been conservative. Sarah had waited for nearly a full minute. Chuck had to admit, he was impressed.

He pushed his wheelie chair back and popped his neck. “For you, always. What’s up?” As he spoke, he glanced over. He immediately had to muffle a snicker. Normally, Sarah’s workout wardrobe wasn’t amusing—merely a bit rough on the blood pressure, as it didn’t always seem to include shirts—but today he had to manfully fight back chuckles.

Sarah simply tilted an eyebrow at that reaction. The game, it seemed, was afoot. “Seems to me you’ve figured out exactly what’s up.”

Chuck fought to keep a straight face. “N-not sure what you mean,” he lied.

“Uh-huh.” Sarah crossed her arms over her chest.

“Having a good workout?” Chuck interlaced his fingers and rested his elbows on the arms of his chair. If push came to shove, he could hide a smile behind his hands. “It’s Tuesday, that means you run the entire San Andreas fault, right?”

“We need to talk about the dummy, Chuck.”

“What?” Chuck asked, doing his best to sound innocent. “You don’t like Frank’s Halloween costume?”

“For the last time, the dummy’s name is not Frank.”

“Then what is it? I’ve yet to hear you offer a better suggestion.”

“It’s a dummy. It doesn’t have a personality, which means it doesn’t get a name, and therefore its name can’t be Frank.”

“Well, right now, probably not,” Chuck said. “It’s more like…Frankie, wouldn’t you say? Unless Frank’s into cross-dressing.”

He could tell that Sarah was fighting the laughter just as hard as he was, but she held her glare admirably well. The game of chicken continued. “You’re proud of yourself,” she accused, pointing a finger at him.

“Well, yeah.” Chuck gave her a ‘duh’ look. “You have to admit, Frankie is a work of art.” 

“The _dummy_ should not be a work of art. The _dummy_ is a training tool. Where’d you get the dress, Chuck?”

“Morgan picked it up for me.” Chuck hummed innocently and swiveled his chair back and forth. “Nice touch, though, right?” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

As he expected, that broke the dam. Sarah doubled forward at the waist, laughing. By sheer force of will, Chuck ignored the view now open to him and crossed to the miniature fridge he’d insisted on putting in the corner. He pulled out a bottle of water for Sarah and a Red Bull for himself, nudging the bottle into Sarah’s hand as she continued to laugh.

“Wow, you were really holding it in,” Chuck observed, sitting on the edge of his desk and crossing his legs at the ankle. 

Sarah straightened, and wiped her streaming eyes. “God, Chuck, before today I would’ve thought it’d be easy to punch a transvestite hippie in the face. But it’s not. It’s really, really not.”

“Don’t tell Casey,” Chuck said. “It’ll break his heart.”

Sarah stifled another giggle. Chuck grinned.

“Where is Casey, anyway?” Sarah glanced over at the unopened door, even though Casey’s office wasn’t visible from her current spot. Her desk out in the front room had views to both offices, but Casey usually left his door closed.

“I gave him a tip on a terrorist landing at LAX on the noon flight. He’s hoping the guy tries to run.”

“Why’d you tell Casey and not me?”

“The big guy doesn’t do offices well. He starts prowling. And growling. And it’s really distracting. It’s a simple op, he’s getting to use his NSA buddies and without you there, he doesn’t have to explain the strange jurisdiction.” Chuck shrugged. “Also, who am I to deprive you of your training session with Frank-slash-Frankie?” 

Sarah attempted to scowl, which didn’t work. “Only you would think to put lipstick on a training dummy.” A thought occurred to her, and all laughter vanished. “Wait a second—whose lipstick was that?”

Chuck shifted his feet and eyed all three escape routes from his office. “Ah…nobody’s?”

“You stole my lipstick?” Sarah straightened. 

Chuck reminded himself that running away over makeup was much too cowardly for a CIA agent. It helped. Somewhat. “It was a shade you weren’t ever going to use,” he said, backing up slowly. “And, hey, there’s plenty left, Frank didn’t need much. It’s not like the dummy’s been making out with anything else down in Castle. So, in all likelihood, Frank’s lips have touched nothing but your fists…”

Sarah stalked forward like a predator, all but chasing him around the room. “Never steal a woman’s makeup, Chuck.”

“Look, look, look, it’s right here.” Chuck bumped into his desk and fumbled around in a drawer. Sarah continued to advance on him, even when he held up the used tube of lipstick like a shield. “See? If I return it, it’s not stealing, it’s borrowing.”

Sarah snatched the tube and frowned at it. “Oh. Hmm. I wasn’t going to use this shade.”

“Exactly. It’s the color of a corpse.”

“Still. The principle stands.” Sarah rolled her eyes at him, but he could see the smile still fighting through. It made him relax. “You’ve got to stop messing with my training dummy. First the sign last week, and now the dummy’s wearing a wig and a dress and a flower power headband…” She shook her head.

“In my defense,” Chuck said, “Frank really did want to know, hence the sign.”

“Yes, because nothing’s creepier than coming down to your dojo and seeing your dummy with a sign that says, ‘Why don’t you love me anymore, Sarah Walker?’” Sarah rolled her eyes for about the fifteenth time and uncapped her water bottle to take a pull. Both she and Chuck glanced over when the phone rang at her desk. “That’s weird. You go clean Frankie up, I’m gonna take that.”

“Aw, you called it Frankie.”

“Shut up.”

“Shutting up.”

Chuck ducked through the Scooby door (they really needed to fix that, as Sarah was the only member of the team that could walk through without head injury) and headed down to Sarah’s so-called dojo. He had to grin as he approached his handiwork—the ugly, floral-print dress Morgan had found in a thrift shop clashed with the dummy’s green-gray “skin.” The brute-like face was still twisted into a permanent attacker’s scowl, but it looked ridiculous now, dead-flesh-colored lipstick gracing that grimacing mouth and—Chuck’s crowning touch—blush pinking those green-gray cheeks. “You’ve got good cheekbone structure, buddy, don’t let anybody tell you differently,” Chuck told the dummy. Since nobody else was around, he slapped Frank on the shoulder in a consolatory manner. “Just wait until you see what I’ve got planned for Valentine’s Day. Poor you.”

He kept up a stream of chatter as he cleaned up. It was still the day before Halloween, but the idea had struck him during Casey’s FOX news marathon the previous evening, and it couldn’t be resisted. 

Sarah came in just as he’d finished wiping the last of the make-up off. “Borrowed one of your face-wipes from the bathroom,” he said without looking over his shoulder at her. He’d managed to convince her that killing the Intersect via heart attack was a bad idea, so Sarah made sure to walk noisily around him. “Well, I guess it’s stealing in this case, as you probably don’t want it back and—what’s up?” 

She ignored the cleaned-up dummy and stuck her hands in her jeans pockets. Nerves, Chuck decided, and she was no longer in work-out attire. “Want to go get some lunch?”

Chuck glanced instinctively at the ceiling, and hoped his flinch wasn’t too obvious. The problem was, he was dealing with Sarah Walker. The woman routinely put eagles to shame. She caught his reaction.

“I know. It’s not an odd-numbered day. But I think we should get out of Castle, go enjoy some time on the town.”

Something in her tone, that too-bright, too-forced quality, made Chuck want to frown. He wanted to argue against going outside, but then, he always wanted to argue about going outside these days.

And cowering inside just ruined the tough spy image. “Okay. Though it’s Casey’s turn to buy, and I forgot to lift his wallet before he left.”

“It’ll be my treat this time. C’mon.”

**30 OCTOBER 2007**   
**THE HARD WOK CAFÉ**   
**12:18 PDT**

“So what was it that you didn’t want to tell me back at Castle?” Chuck asked as he set his lunch tray on the table and began to unload both of their meals onto the questionably clean table. Since Sarah was buying, she’d picked the restaurant—and the Hard Wok Café was probably the most interesting thing she could have picked. The lighting was moody and dark even in the middle of the day, which relaxed him far better than an airy, open, bright space. And it was full of people, which would mask chatter.

Sarah busied herself with setting out napkins and chopsticks. “You caught that, huh?”

Chuck shrugged.

Instead of digging into her meal—Sarah was usually an economical eater, eating first what she would need for energy and savoring the rest only if she had time—she pulled out her phone. “You’re going to flash, but try not to be obvious about it,” she told him in an undertone.

“Yes, ma’am.” Chuck gave her a sarcastic smile as he took the phone, and glanced at the screen.

She was right. The flash hit him mid-crescendo.

A jelly-fish at night, lit in orange. Lightning. A brief flicker of binoculars.

A flyer with three different images of a man vaguely reminiscent of Jude Law, doing an Eminem impression, scowling at the camera, and rocking a hobbit-like appearance respectively. LASZLO MAHNOVSKI flashed red above the pictures.

CONSIDERED DANGEROUS.

Binoculars again, this time with creepy faces peering out from the lenses. Lightning.

Information on Laszlo Mahnovski – DOB: 1 January, 1982. PLACE OF BIRTH: Arizona. HEIGHT: 5’10”. HAIR: Dark. EYES: Hazel. SEX: Male.

The jelly-fish again.

Chuck sucked in a gulp of oxygen and blinked back to reality. When he saw Sarah raising an eyebrow at him, he hastily relaxed his grip on the chopsticks. Without a word, she handed him a fresh, unbroken pair. He discarded the pieces off to the side.

“So why’s this guy important?” Chuck asked, glancing once more at the picture on Sarah’s cell phone before he handed the device back. He shook off the last vestiges of flash-head and focused on his teriyaki noodles. “Who is he? Or, rather, since I know his name and his height and hair color and all, why’s he considered dangerous?”

“He escaped last month from an underground holding facility. They think he’s loose somewhere in LA.” Sarah leaned forward slightly and quirked her lips into a cover smile. To others in the restaurant, it would have seemed like she were just sharing an amusing, if private, anecdote with her dining partner. “They also think he may be trying to build a bomb.”

“Hm.” Chuck nodded contemplatively as he chewed. “Must be pretty smart, then. Why was he in the underground holding facility instead of prison?”

“Because he’s pretty smart. Genius smart. Graduated college at fourteen, got his Ph.D. at seventeen.”

“So if he’s genius smart, why’d they keep him underground?” Satisfied that if they were to be called away right now on spy business, he wouldn’t starve, Chuck switched to the miso soup.

The Hard Wok Café didn’t get much right, but they made a mean miso soup.

“The facility was also a lab. He’s a weapons designer, and apparently very unstable.” 

“So there’s a loose weapons designer that may be trying to build a bomb?” Chuck shook his head as he slurped up soup. “What, is Team Bartowski supposed to find him or somet—you said underground?”

Sarah had been watching him very carefully. Now she inclined her head, slightly.

Chuck felt his throat dry up. Suddenly, soup no longer seemed appealing. An entire platter of his sister’s famous lasagna wouldn’t have been appetizing. He rested both elbows on the table, crossing his hands at the wrist in the center of the tray. “How long did they hold him down there, Sarah?”

“Ten years.” She said it without flinching.

A swell of emotions hit all at once—pity, disgust, anger, and as ever, the overwhelming sense of helplessness and despair that the government could do such a thing to somebody. He fought hard to control the shudders and blinked away memories of his own bunker. “Ten _years_? Well, good for him for escaping, then!”

Sarah leaned forward and touched a finger to his wrist. “Chuck, you have to remember that your situation is nothing like his.”

But Chuck had already done the math. If Laszlo had become Dr. Mahnovski at seventeen, he’d become property of the government pretty much the next day for ten years to have passed. “Really? Because they sound similar. They let a guy finish college and then they toss him away for the rest of his life. Sounds like a bestseller, don’t you think?” He laughed hollowly and freed himself from the pressure of Sarah’s finger so that he could rub both hands over his face. “So he got away. Good for him, then.”

Sarah wordlessly pulled out her phone again. She flicked her finger across the screen. Laszlo’s face disappeared. A much more grim tale took its place.

“Whoa,” Chuck said, staring at the dead bodies on the tiny screen. “Who’re they? And why are they—they’re not sleeping, are they?”

“They _were_ Laszlo Mahnovski’s handlers.”

“Oh.” Chuck stared at the picture with something akin to horror. “I would never have done that to anybody.”

“I know.”

“Even if they’d kept me there for ten years.”

“I know,” Sarah repeated.

The rest of Sarah’s words sank in. “Bomb?” Chuck asked, fully comprehending for the first time. “You said bomb?”

“Shh.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault. You could have told me this back at Castle, where I could have my freak-out in private and…say something treasonous,” Chuck realized, mid-babble. He tilted his head and studied Sarah, considering. “You’re just a master strategist to all things Bartowski, aren’t you?”

“I’m just looking out for you. I got a call from the FBI—they’re activating all agency teams in the area, keeping a look-out for this guy. Which includes Team Bartowski, so I’ve got a meet set up with Agent Scary for this afternoon.”

“I’m sorry—Agent Scary?” Chuck, deciding that the teriyaki noodles weren’t going anywhere, pulled them back in front of him and began to eat.

“Don’t look at me,” Sarah said. “I didn’t choose his name.”

All right. So now what, we’re supposed to drive around and hope we spot this psychopath?”

“I hope not. That would take forever.” Sarah fished out a piece of chicken and dipped it in soy sauce. She was unsurprisingly adept at using chopsticks. “I’ll get us copies of security footage and hopefully a few psych profiles, and we’ll see if we can figure out what his target is from there. It’s possible they’re wrong about the bomb.”

“He could have just wanted to escape?” Chuck asked. He pondered for a moment. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. The injuries inflicted on those handlers were too…violent. At the very least, this guy snapped. At the most…”

“We have to stop him,” Sarah agreed.

Chuck slurped up the last noodle. “I think I’m ready to get back to work,” he decided, never one to linger in a public place anymore. Even if he’d felt so inclined, there was an urgency now. He had a very odd, trigger happy doppelganger running around Los Angeles to stop, after all.

Sarah finished up her own meal and rose, collecting their empty dishes on the tray. “I’ll drop you back at Castle and head out for my meet. Promise me you’ll stay put until Casey and I get back?”

“Promise.” Chuck took the tray so that he could throw away the trash on the way out the door. He shot her a quicksilver grin over his shoulder as he did so. “Nice use of the name, by the way, but still—no Casey present, no dollar.”

I’ll tell you what you can do with your dollar,” Sarah muttered.

**30 OCTOBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS**   
**17:02 PDT**

“You did _what_ to my training dummy?”

For the second time that day, Chuck backed up slowly, his hands held up in appeasement. “Relax, Casey,” he pleaded, nearly swearing when he bumped into the conference room table instead of missing it entirely as he’d hoped. “The makeup came right off, and it wasn’t even that big of a deal. Sarah’s left more makeup on Frank from head-butting him, I think—”

Casey growled and began unbuttoning the cuffs of his left sleeve so that he could roll it up. Because he’d been busy picking up a Nigerian terrorist at LAX, he wore the G-man suit, but he’d discarded the jacket at his desk upstairs. The shirtsleeves and tie alone did absolutely nothing to lessen his menace. 

“You put,” Casey said, “an official government-use training dummy in a _dress_ , Bartowski!”

“In my defense, it was a very pretty dress, and bought at a thrift store, which helps with welfare programs and—meep.” Chuck dove under the table and scrunched himself into the smallest ball possible, just out of Casey’s reach. If the NSA agent truly wanted to grab him he’d have to get down on the floor…just like that.

He had approximately two seconds to stare into Casey’s feral smirk before a feminine throat cleared. “You boys done? How many times am I going to come down here and see something like this?”

Since Sarah Walker’s presence evened things out so that the odds no longer swung entirely in his direction, Casey growled—minor annoyance, deal with this later—before he rose back to his feet. Chuck scrambled out from under the table, popping up and immediately backing away from Casey.

Sarah, standing on the stairs, raised an eyebrow at him. “Under the table, Chuck?”

“Hey, I had a ninety-two percent chance of survival under there.” Chuck eyed Casey sideways and scooted around to the other side of the conference table. He’d been in the main bay when Casey had returned from his mission at LAX, and he’d been grievously mistaken in thinking that Casey might enjoy hearing about his prank. He focused on Sarah now instead, giving her a bright smile. “Did you wheedle out that footage and those profiles from Agent Scary?”

“I did.” Sarah held up the file for evidence.

Chuck snatched it like a kid going for the good stash of Halloween candy and started to page through. “Good girl.”

When he turned away, Sarah grabbed his ear. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Ow. Ah. Ow— _ow_. Ah, woman. Not girl. Woman. Nice woman?”

“Better.” Sarah released Chuck, much to his relief.

Casey folded his arms over his chest and glowered at his two CIA compatriots. “Agent Scary?” he asked.

“Don’t look at her, she didn’t choose the name.”

Both ignored Chuck, which had become unsurprisingly easy after the first few days of Operation Prometheus. “We’ve got a fugitive loose in Los Angeles,” Sarah said, and proceeded to fill Casey and Chuck in on everything the FBI Agent had briefed her over during the meet. Chuck listened with one ear as he paged through Laszlo Mahnovski’s psych files, his frown deepening every time he turned a page. By the time he reached the end, he was actively not paying attention to Sarah anymore.

She nudged his knee—which had been jiggling—with her foot to get his attention. “Why’re you so twitchy?”

“Hmm? Oh. Red Bulls.”

Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “There’s a recommended limit for those, you know.”

“I know. I just choose to ignore it.” Chuck chose to grace her briefly with a brilliant smile, but it quickly faded. He just hadn’t been in a smiling mood since their lunch together hours before. It was hard to smile through numbness, though the Red Bull helped. “These files look familiar.”

“You know this psychopath, Bartowski?”

“Yeah,” Chuck said, sarcasm dripping. “All us bunker guys, we hang out. We’ve got our own chatroom and everything. Fascinating place. Got into this discussion once with a guy stranded in Africa about how to properly decorate a cinderblock wall and—erk.”

“Casey,” Sarah admonished once Chuck had started turning red. “We’ve talked about this. No violence toward the Intersect.”

Casey gave her an incredulous look. “Pot or kettle, Walker?”

“I grabbed his ear. That’s a fairly big difference between the ear and the neck.”

“Not really. Just two inches,” Casey muttered, but he released Chuck, who sucked in a deep breath. 

Chuck massaged his abused neck and glared. He really needed to get faster at stopping Casey. “You two are a barrel of yuks, you know that?”

“Bartowski, drop the sarcasm and tell us, in ten words or less, exactly why these files are familiar to you.”

Chuck took another deep breath and held up a finger. He stood and crossed to the filing cabinet near the desk Sarah had claimed for her downstairs use. After a minute of rifling, he came back with a manila folder, and dropped that in front of Casey.

He flipped it open and scowled. “Your dossier that Davenport sent over? You couldn’t just say that?”

“Not in ten words or less.”

Casey grunted; it was a fair point.

“There’s bound to be some similarities, Chuck. Don’t sweat it.” Sarah stretched to put the security footage DVD into one of the readers. “So here’s the footage of Laszlo escaping. I’m told it’s pretty brutal.” She flicked a glance at Chuck.

“I can handle it,” he promised, reaching for the Red Bull that he had been drinking before Casey and Sarah had arrived. “Hey!”

Sarah finished off the Red Bull she’d snatched in one gulp. “Heh,” Casey said, and chuckled. “Way to take one for the team, Walker. And thank you.”

“Sorry, Chuck.” Sarah winced at the taste. She tossed the can into a trash can behind her without looking. “It really was for your own good. You’ve had too many of those things.”

Chuck glowered at her even as both of his knees jiggled. “It’s cold and flu season, you know.”

“So?”

“So don’t come to me if you got sick because you’re sharing drinks. Without asking first, I must add.”

“Are you getting sick? You should have told me, I—”

“Children,” Casey interrupted. “As fascinating as it is listening to you squabble, can we get on with it?”

Chuck was a little grateful that Casey had stopped Sarah mid-sentence. He wasn’t quite sure he wanted to know what sort of medicines the CIA approved of for eradicating colds. All he knew was that Ellie wouldn’t approve.

So he watched, the caffeine in his system making his legs bounce, as on the footage, a psychopath named Laszlo Mahnovski dispatched an entire guard detail. He picked up details with the ease of long practice, allowing the back of his brain to muse over the situation. Laszlo had had to work in secrecy and bust through a legion of guards to break free. Chuck had sat in a bunker for five years without a single guard holding him there. It had been patriotic duty and nothing else—well, nothing, he could admit, until the agoraphobia started kicking in—keeping him there. Sure, they’d set up a sensor, but Sarah had proved twice just how easy it was to sneak past that sensor.

What made him and Laszlo Mahnovski so different?

When the security loop finished, he rocked forward in the chair. “Can you play that again?”

Sarah obliged him.

The second time through enabled him to watch Laszlo specifically rather than the action that was happening on screen. He saw plenty of fear on the weapons designer’s face, but more than that, he saw determination, resolve, and most disturbingly, not a single grain of remorse. Even when he had taken out the guard that had greeted him as “Laz” before Laszlo had attacked. No regret whatsoever.

“He’s unstable,” Sarah said, drawing his attention away from the video. “And off his meds. Some of his mental problems were compounded by the underground lab, others made the underground lab necessary. But we’re to treat the fugitive as dangerous and to contact each other immediately if any of us are to run across his path.”

“By any of us,” Chuck said, “you mean me, right? You can just say that.”

“Of course she means you, idiot. Not all of us here make it a game to invite trouble,” Casey told him.

Chuck glowered, mostly for show. “I’m sorry, who was it that got taken by the Triad before the drug lord could kidnap me?”

“Was this before or after some idiot got out of the bulletproofed car to be held at gunpoint by the Chinese spy?”

“You’re really not going to let that go, are you?” Chuck asked. “For the last time, nobody told me the Crown Vic was bulletproofed!”

“Boys,” Sarah said, her voice deceptively mild. “Can we get on with it?” Casey glowered; Chuck mouthed ‘sorry’ at her and ducked his head low. “Chuck, did you find anything about Laszlo in the database?”

“Actually, yeah.” Chuck raised his head and held out a hand for the remote. When Sarah ceded control, he keyed a sequence into the remote and different images began to fill the screens. “So Laszlo, maybe-bomb-building-psychopath aside and all, was probably the coolest guy ever. This guy is like the government version of Q, I’m totally not kidding.” He pressed a button and documents on three of the screens lit up. The Red Bull cushioning his system made him bounce a little as he sat up. “This is the guy that designed Castle, guys. How awesome is that?”

Casey scanned the documents on the screens nearest him and, shocker, grunted. “Grade-A egghead,” he observed, sniffing. “As if we didn’t have enough of those running around.”

Chuck ignored him. “I was able to dig and find some of the specs he designed and this guy…he’s a genius. I know you told me that earlier, Sarah, but he really is a _genius_. He designed this logarithm that—”

“Don’t care,” Casey said. “What does any of this have to do with helping us find him?”

Chuck reminded himself that Casey hadn’t been hugged enough as a child, and that none of this taunts, grunts, and growls were personal. “Well,” he said, completely missing the supportive smile Sarah gave him, “since he designed Castle, and as far as I can tell, this is the nearest stronghold where he can gather supplies, I took it upon myself to beef up Castle’s security for the foreseeable future, and I took our names out of the system as a precaution. If he does manage to hack past my safeguards,” and Chuck’s tone told his partners just how unlikely he thought this would be, “he’s going to think that three very different agents work here rather than the ones that really do.”

He clicked another button. Immediately, their pictures popped up on screen, with different names under each.

“Jaime?” Sarah asked. “You really think I look like a Jaime?”

“Rainer?” Casey said.

“I had to get creative,” Chuck said, a little disappointed that neither had liked the names he’d picked. He’d thought the names fit. “And Casey, you could go by Rainer or Mike or even Mikey, if you prefer. Or maybe not Mikey. Definitely not Mikey. Anyway.” He clicked again and their IDs disappeared, replaced by rather detailed schematics of Castle. Chuck paged through them with the remote, occasionally pausing to highlight something with his laser pointer. The security he’d spent all afternoon beefing up. “The Castle was Laszlo’s last creation before he fled the bunker, and it’s possible that he may not even know where it is because the date of his escape coincides pretty closely to when they decided to kick Prometheus off in Burbank instead of sticking me in an underground bunker. Again.”

“Will we be required to do anything else to get inside with these new security measures?” Sarah asked.

“No, but the retina scanner won’t be random anymore, so you might as well ignore your code and just go straight for the scanner instead.” Chuck shrugged apologetically. “I know it’s a pain to stand still for the scan, but I figured it would be the hardest thing for him to hack.”

“It’s good work, Chuck,” Sarah said. “Did you get all of the info dumps for the day registered?”

“No, I got caught up with the Laszlo research, I’ve still got a few shipping manifests to page through. You want me to get back to those? I mean, I could stay down here and help.”

“We’re not the forefront team on the Laszlo situation—he was the FBI’s asset, so they’re handling it. Since we’re the reserve team…” Sarah trailed off with a shrug. “No point in having all three of us focused on this.”

He’d much rather spend a few more hours focusing on Laszlo’s impressive list of feats, as it read like a gadget-head’s wet dream, but she had a point. Chuck swallowed his disappointment and reminded himself that he could always do more research tomorrow. “Yeah. I’ll just head up and get started.”

“When you’re done,” Casey said, “go home.”

Chuck, halfway to the stairs, paused. “You sure? I could help, you know.”

“You’ve got your therapy appointment tomorrow, and Beckman wants you to tackle some of the New York info dumps.” Sarah swiveled her chair so that she could smile at him. Though the smile contained a hint of apology, Chuck didn’t pay much attention. The word “therapy” had made him scowl. “You should get some rest tonight. Take it easy.”

Chuck stalked back to the conference table and grabbed his dossier in front of Casey. He wanted to study it one more time, though he’d memorized everything he would need to know. “The info I gathered on Laszlo is in the A folder, subfolder forty-nine. It’s not exhaustive by any means, but it kind of gives you an inner look at the poetry of the guy’s genius. You’ll see what I mean.”

“Okay. Thanks, Chuck. See you tomorrow.”

Chuck just nodded and gave a half-wave as he climbed the stairs. Barring anything in those manifest lists that made him flash, he’d been dismissed for the day. 

**30 OCTOBER 2007**  
 **CHUCK’S CAR**  
 **21:37 PDT**

Chuck knew that he and Casey didn’t have the most easygoing working relationship on the planet. In fact, to call their working environment easygoing would be something like saying the mogwai didn’t like candy. As roommates, however, it was simpler to cope. They woke in the morning, they prepared for work, sometimes even carpooling. They spent the day bickering. They returned home. Dinner was usually something of the microwavable or previously-frozen variety. Casey would stay downstairs to watch the FOX news network for a couple of hours before bed. Chuck would retreat upstairs to play video games, or head to see Morgan or his sister. Or so he told Casey.

Since Casey didn’t come back at their usual dinner time, Chuck had decided to grab dinner through the first drive-thru he passed. He sat in his customary spot on the corner and chewed on rubbery fries as he waited for her to appear. Since it was Tuesday, she didn’t have night class, which meant she’d likely bring home take-out for herself and spend the evening inside.

He’d made an appropriate stake-out mix this time. Maybe it was strange to mix “Love Potion Number Nine” and “One Way Or Another.” Maybe it was poking a little too much fun at himself, when the situation really, really wasn’t funny. He had only to see the tightness in Sarah’s jaw whenever she found out what he’d been doing to know that. Or see Casey roll his eyes and grumble about God saving him from lovesick geeks with no concept of boundaries.

But it was all he had. Through the speakers, Blondie rolled over into Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me.”

Chuck’s phone chimed in on the chorus, only it sang Journey instead. His fault, Chuck thought as he pulled the device from his pocket, for ever letting Morgan anywhere near his phone.

“Yeah, buddy,” he said, cranking down the radio with his free hand as he answered. “What’s up?”

“Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, you have to get to the Buy More!” Excitement crackled through Morgan’s voice; Chuck imagined his best friend jumping up and down in place. 

“Wh-what? What’s going on?”

“That thing I told you about! It’s happening tonight, we’re mobilizing the troops, everybody’s in place, things are good to go. You have to get here, man, and bring any ammunition you possibly can. Paintball gun, Nerf gun, hell, bring a Koosh ball if you have to.”

Chuck glanced toward the empty apartment building. He’d yet to see Jill come home and she should be back any minute… “Morgan, now’s not really a good—”

“Wait a second.” Morgan drew up short. “Are you with a woman, Chuck? That’s your ‘I’m with a woman’ voice.”

“I’m not—”

“Is it the hot blonde secretary whose picture you have in your phone?” Morgan sounded excited. “Bring her too! The gang would love to meet the woman who’s captured the heart of The One Bartowski!”

“First, she’s an office manager, not a secretary. Secondly, she has a name. It’s Sarah. And I’m not with her or anybody else right now. Nobody has captured the heart of—really? The One Bartowski? That’s what your calling me now?” Chuck rolled his eyes at his absent best friend. 

“Don’t knock the name, dude. My religion, my naming conventions.” Morgan paused and shouted something intelligible to somebody in the background. It sounded like the early stages of a riot, but with the Buy More crew, it was more likely a party. “So what, even if you’re not with her, give her a call, tell her to come to the Buy More. She’ll be very disappointed if she misses the chance to witness history in the making, Chuck. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. I don’t think you realize this. This is big. It’s huge. It’s first-time-finding-out-Samus-is-a-chick enormous. So grab your weapon of choice and get to the Buy More. Harry Tang and his orangutans are going _down_! Twenty minutes, buddy. Don’t be late.”

Chuck was left with a dial tone.

He stared wistfully at the empty apartment windows, mourning the fact that a night of sitting in the car staring wasn’t going to pay off. He wouldn’t see Jill tonight. Besides, he had received his marching orders. It was time to go home, gear up, and head to the Buy More. With twin barrels of curiosity and melancholy eating at him, Chuck put his key in the ignition and drove away.

**30 OCTOBER 2007**   
**BACHELOR PAD**   
**21:52 PDT**

At the apartment, Chuck raced upstairs and pawed through his closet for the dual-action, fifty-round, semi-automatic foam-dart gun he’d purchased especially for this. A distant part of him acknowledged that he was rapidly approaching what could be called a psychological saturation point. Between lunch out with Sarah, and sitting on an open street stalking Jill, his system might overload. But curiosity made the rest of him shrug and ignore all of that.

Plus the dart gun just felt good in his hands.

Since Morgan had put him on a deadline, Chuck ignored the Bryce board and the multitudes of manila folders covering every inch of his bed. He walked right past his monitor, which was open to Kingdom of Athenei. Onscreen, Schnookie idled, alternating between eating patches of grass and nibbling on her own toenails.

Damn, but he was proud of her.

The front door opened just as he started toward it. Casey came in, dumped his keys, and stopped short. His eyes tracked immediately to the gun at Chuck’s side, which wasn’t all that surprising. The gun, after all, was a lurid green with purple accents, and loaded with yellow foam darts. It was about as stealthy as a bull running surveillance from the middle of a china shop.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Bartowski?”

“This really isn’t what it looks like,” Chuck said.

“Really? Because it looks like you’re going out of the apartment, the one where Walker and I asked you to stay for the night, armed to your geek teeth with a pathetic toy. Give me that.” Casey jerked the gun out of Chuck’s hands and grunted as he examined the gun. “What is this? What were you planning to do?”

“It’s a gun, Casey, I think even a badass super secret agent like yourself would realize that.”

Casey grunted and pointed the gun at Chuck’s midsection. “Wanna drop the sarcasm?”

Even though knew the foam darts wouldn’t hurt, even at this range, they would just be a pain to clean up. “Fine,” Chuck said, hoping Casey’s temper wouldn’t inspire him to shoot anyway. “I’ll lose the sarcasm, but I would like to officially go on record protesting this double-standard.”

“Noted. Ignored. Explain.”

Chuck waffled. He was, in theory, a full grown man. It wasn’t any of Casey’s business since he wasn’t putting himself in danger. On the one hand, admitting what he was on his way to do to a cold school killer NSA agent just seemed ridiculous. 

On the other, Casey would never let him leave until he explained. So it came out in a rush: “Morgan and his pals are staging a revolution at the Buy More. It’s supposed to be something like the war to end all wars, and not to be missed.”

“A revolution?”

Was that interest in Casey’s eyes? Chuck gulped back shock and decided to push his luck. “An insurgency, if you will, to overthrow an evil overlord. Goes by the name of Harry Tang. Major tool if there ever was one. He’s apparently making life hell for the workers at the Buy More, so tonight is the night for their revenge. I’m going over, going to lay down some cover fire for my buddies, help them out. At the very most, I’ll have a Red Bull hangover tomorrow, and trust me, I can work with that.”

“Okay.”

Of all of the answers Chuck had been expecting, this one was so far off the list that it had held no hope of ever making it past the velvet ropes. “O-okay?”

“Here. C’mon.” Casey shoved the gun back at him on the way by.

Chuck barely caught the gun before it clattered to the floor. “C-c’mon?” he echoed, and to his amazement, followed Casey into the other man’s bedroom. He got the barest details—a bed, white walls, a framed picture of Ronald Reagan keeping a framed picture of Charlton Heston company on the dresser—on the way through, for Casey crossed immediately to a closet full of G-man suits. Chuck watched the other man input a code into what he had assumed to be a thermostat.

Immediately, a grinding, whirring noise made him tense, but it was only the racks of ties and suits retreating back into the closet.

“Whoa,” Chuck said.

The closet hadn’t finished. Long, thin trapdoors on the closet floor opened, very much like the monitor bays in Chuck’s desk at Castle. Panels slid out of the floor, thin and wide, nearly as tall as Chuck and Casey. Lights around the edges flared to life, illuminating the panels’ wares admirably.

Chuck’s jaw swung gently in the breeze.

Casey ignored both the geek and three quarters of the panels that would make any card-carrying member of the NRA jealous. Not a single gun company was left out of this particular party, Chuck noted. Though from the number of Sig Sauer articles pegged neatly to those panels, Casey apparently owned controlling stock in that company. He didn’t seem to be a discriminating type—he liked _guns_. Shotguns, revolvers, pistols, machine guns…blow-guns. Wonderingly, Chuck reached out to pick that one up, only to have Casey slap his hand away without looking.

It was unnerving how both Sarah and Casey could do that.

Casey swiveled the panel on the left around and surveyed his options with pursed lips. As Chuck continued to gape, he went for the gun in the middle. It wasn’t the largest, but it was by far the most impressive.

“Like it?” he asked the bug-eyed Chuck. “I call her the Harbinger.”

“Uh, y-yeah. She’s a beauty.” And she was, too. Easily twice the size of Chuck’s own gun, The Harbinger could hold twice the amount of ammo, dual-action, with an automatic reload and what looked like a long-distance scope and laser guidance system. On top of that, the gun was sleek, painted matte black with bold blue accents. A functional work of art.

As Chuck goggled, wondering exactly when he had entered this alternate dimension and if there was perhaps a super-spy version of himself running around, romancing women that looked like Sarah Walker, Casey slung a couple of dart ammo belts over one shoulder, reset the closet panels, cocked the gun, and said, “Let’s go.”

**30 OCTOBER 2007**   
**BURBANK BUY MORE**   
**22:13 PDT**

Given the latish hour, it was unsurprising that the Buy More parking lot would be mostly empty, containing only a line of Buy More Nerd Herders and the employee cars. Either way, Casey parked over in front of Underpants, Etc. so that his beloved Crown Vic would be out of the line of fire should the battle spill out into the parking lot. Together, he and Chuck climbed from the car. It had taken Chuck all of his willpower to convince Casey that they didn’t need their tactical dress uniforms for this mission. Jeans, dark shirts, and ski caps would suffice.

Looking like a couple of muggers with absurdly bright guns, they strode across the parking lot. Though the inside of the Buy More was dark, the doors opened with a whisper to admit them.

“Well, this is spooky,” Chuck said as he looked into the belly of the dimly-lit electronics superstore.

Casey’s head jerked and he yanked the Harbinger up, aiming off to the right, toward the Home Entertainment center. “Get down,” he muttered to Chuck, and they slunk behind one of the freestanding carts that contained the new release DVDs. Chuck had no idea what _License to Wed_ was about, but he had absolutely no desire to see it. He would, however, have no problem whatsoever using it as a shield.

“What is it?” he asked Casey.

Casey squinted into the dimness. “Saw movement. Where are we supposed to meet your team?”

Chuck’s pocket chirped. New text message. “Break room,” he said once he’d checked. “They must be tapped into the security feed back there, they saw us come in.”

Since Chuck had briefed Casey on the layout of the Buy More, he was able to lead the way through the DVD section, heading parallel to the back of the store on a slant toward the break room. They gave the home entertainment area a wide berth—“Most likely the enemy base.”—and used the Nerd Herd desk for cover. Though they occasionally heard the squeak of a sneaker against linoleum, no bogeys were sighted.

Chuck gave the secret knock while Casey covered him, the Harbinger pointed toward the store.

A very relieved Morgan opened the door and quickly yanked Chuck into a break room full of people in geek commando gear. Even Creepy Jeff, it seemed, had found a way to geekify the Army Surplus. Or at least Chuck assumed it was Creepy Jeff underneath a full camouflage blanket. 

“Where have you been? You took forever!” 

“Getting back-up,” Chuck said.

Morgan’s eyes lit up. “You brought your secretary?”

“Office manager,” Chuck started to say, but Casey shouldered his way into the room, knocking Chuck forward. “And no, I brought him. Morgan, meet John Casey. John Casey, my best friend Morgan. Casey here runs security for my company.”

“Nice to meet you, man,” Morgan said, extending a hand toward Casey.

Casey ignored him completely. “What in the sainted name of George S. Patton, Jr. is that abomination?”

Chuck quickly jumped between the NSA agent and the Wall of Chuck before that vein in Casey’s neck could start throbbing. “Morgan missed me, that’s all this is,” he said through his teeth, hoping that Casey could read minds and understand that the wall, while insane, terrifying, and quite frankly a little puzzling, but not a threat to national security. 

“It’s our shrine,” Morgan said as he unrolled a set of blueprints onto one of the tables, “to The One. And it’s not important right now. All right, lady and gentlemen, here we go. Let the Battle of Wolf Three-Five-Nine commence.”

Chuck squinted at first the blueprints, which seemed to be of the Buy More, and then at Morgan. “Didn’t the Battle of Wolf Three-Five-Nine go horribly, horribly wrong for the good guys?”

“Details, Chuck, details.” Morgan produced a riding crop from nowhere and smacked it against the wall. More specifically, across a picture of a glowering bald man. The words “ASSISTANT MANAGER” blazed in Buy More yellow and green under the picture. Some clever geek had blacked out “ISTANT” and “AGER” with a Sharpie. “Tell me, Chuck, does that or does that not look like a Borg to you?”

Chuck tilted his head. “Now that you mention it…”

“And this time, the good guys are going to win because, well, that’s how it happens on TV, and that’s how it should happen in the Buy More.” Morgan put both hands on the table, on either side of the blueprints, and met his teammates’ eyes one by one. “Pay attention, boys. And girl.” The woman who’d asked for Chuck’s autograph (he’d since learned her name was Anna) rolled her eyes and shifted her bokken. “The game is Capture the Flag. Per the rules, we’re allowed to put the flag anywhere we want, so we chose…” He gestured at the camouflage blanket in the corner. 

Sure enough, Creepy Jeff appeared from its depths. As everybody watched in horror, he reached into his pants and—

“Eugh!” Every nerd herder, green-shirt, and Chuck cried together.

Creepy Jeff chortled and shoved the flag back into his underwear. 

Morgan waited for the shuddering to finish before he continued. “It’s not a certainty by any means, but we think that Team Tang will have stuffed their flag in one of the refrigerators in the home appliance section. So this is how it’s going to go down…”

**30 OCTOBER 2007**   
**BURBANK BUY MORE**   
**22:37 PDT**

They’d been assigned two-man fireteams for the battle, which seemed sensible to Chuck. Apparently, Morgan and Harry Tang had laid out rules beforehand: any choice of weapon was fine, but team members had to acknowledge hits even if the ammunition didn’t leave a mark. Chuck had seen everything from modified paintball guns to a blowtorch.

Though to be fair, Morgan had seen fit to take that away from Lester Patel. The little dude was just too squirrelly to rock a blowtorch, or so Morgan had claimed. Chuck had thanked him on behalf of society everywhere.

His own partner was, and this was truly a shocker, Casey. Morgan had wanted to team up with his best buddy, but Casey had been adamant. He ran security for Chuck Bartowski’s company. He would run security for Chuck Bartowski.

It was actually kind of fun working with Casey, not that Chuck would ever admit that aloud. Casey treated the whole war with the seriousness of a gun battle on the Ho Chi Minh trail. He led the way through the Buy More, hand signaling whenever a team need to branch off, his footsteps quiet and measured, his every sense alert. Chuck walked backward behind him, covering his rear and trying not to stumble over anything that would give away their position. They could hear shouts and click of random nonlethal weapons as other fireteams encountered the enemy, but so far, Chuck and Casey had been amazingly lucky.

Casey held up a hand. _Wait_. Obediently, Chuck dropped to a knee as he’d been instructed, his gun at the ready. Casey gave him the signal to stay put and wandered forward a couple more feet into the small home appliance section—

The little man struck in a blur of yellow, green, and khaki, shouting a Klingon war cry. He blind-sided Casey so fast that Casey wasn’t able to swing the Harbinger around in time—and the opponent sailed right into him.

Casey reacted with all of the instinct of a hardened soldier and federal agent. He knocked the man in the yellow polo to the ground with one easy stroke, brought the Harbinger around, and shot him in the forehead.

Harry Tang blinked up at John Casey, a dart stuck right between his eyes. 

Chuck gaped. “That was so _cool_! Can you do that again?”

“Shut up, moron, you’re giving away our position,” Casey hissed. He pointed one threatening finger at the stunned Assistant Manager on the ground. “Not a word out of you. You’re a dead man, hear me? I shot you, fair and square.”

The dart bobbled a little when Harry Tang nodded, too scared to speak.

“I think his warble might have given us away a little more than I did,” Chuck whispered, scowling at Casey.

“Whatever. We need to move. C’mon.” Casey sent one last glare at Harry Tang. He reached out to grab Chuck’s shoulder and haul him along.

But Chuck, sensing movement behind him, whirled, gun up. He saw just a flash and took off without thinking it through first, ignoring Casey’s hissed, “Bartowski! It could be a trap!” He rounded a corner into the stereo equipment aisle.

The Koosh ball hit him right in the forehead. It kind of hurt, actually.

“Hah!” Squirrelly Lester actually did a victory dance on the spot. “Got you!”

Chuck gritted his teeth and only willed himself not to rub the mark where the Koosh ball had hit and give Lester the satisfaction. “I’m on your team,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “You just killed one of your own teammates, moron.”

Wow. Casey was certainly rubbing off on him. This could not be considered a good thing at all.

“Did I? Did I really?” Lester’s oily, conniving grin threatened to split his face. “Tell me, Charles. There’s a Manager, and an Ass Man, and then what? Assistant to the Ass Man. No more wading in the depths of obscurity for me. I intend to ride the coattails of one Harold Tiberius Tang to fame and glory and—urk!” A dart sprouted between his eyes. He scowled at Chuck. “That wasn’t fair! You’re dead! I killed you already, that’s against the rules!”

“But this isn’t,” Casey said from behind Lester right before he shot the Ass Man’s ass man in the ass. For good measure, he added an extra dart to the back of Lester’s head. He blew on his gun barrel for good measure, chuckling under his breath. “Nobody likes a traitor.”

Lester stalked off in a huff, probably to find the stunned-stupid Harry Tang and commiserate. Chuck sent a huge sarcastic grin after him—and froze.

“Well, if you’re dead, Bartowski, might as well go wait out in the car. I’ll go find the flag and—what are you looking at?” Casey shifted position so that he could follow Chuck’s line of sight. His eyes widened. “Oh.”

Immediately, warlike Casey disappeared and his twin brother Major Casey took over. “He hasn’t spotted us, so we don’t want to spook him. I’ll circle around, approach from the other side, and you sneak as quietly as you possibly can behind him. Do _not_ alert him to your presence, do _not_ engage him. Got me?”

“Got it,” Chuck said, his voice cracking. He forced his limbs to move jerkily forward.

But it was too late. Their quarry, currently rooting through the home appliance section while every Buy More employee was otherwise occupied, had looked over—right at them. Chuck had approximately two seconds to stare into Laszlo Mahnovski’s startled face.

Before the fugitive turned tail and ran. 


	16. I Told the Witch Doctor…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from. — _Elisabeth Kubler-Ross_

**31 OCTOBER 2007  
BACHELOR PAD  
00:12 PDT**

“And that just about sums it up,” Chuck said, tilting his chair back and staring at his ceiling. “Casey’s still out looking, but Laszlo got a good head-start on us both by knocking over a DVD display stand.” 

He’d tripped, and badly, slamming his hip hard enough into the linoleum that he’d have an impressive bruise the next day. It had been a bad enough fall that it had slowed Casey up and Laszlo Mahnovski had been able to slip through the unlocked front doors of the Buy More and into the oblivion of Los Angeles. Chuck and Casey had driven around for nearly an hour, combing the area, but there were far too many places Laszlo could have gone.

Now, wearing sweatpants and an T-shirt liberated from Sarah and Ellie’s apartment, he tried to keep the glumness out of his voice. “We should’ve been more on our game.”

“Chuck, you couldn’t have known.” On the other end of the phone, Sarah sounded tired. He’d pulled her from sleep, he knew, though she’d claimed otherwise. “Accidents happen.”

“Mm-hmm.” Chuck wasn’t sure he agreed. After all, if it weren’t for his clumsiness, a psychopath would be underground building weapons for the government instead of against it. It sickened him to think about it, so he pushed it from his mind.

“Wait a second,” Sarah said on the other end, sounding a lot more awake. “What were you and Casey even doing at the Buy More that late?”

Chuck winced. He’d hoped to sneak that fact by Sarah, as he’d begun trying to tone down his geekiness around her. Not that she didn’t know already…he just didn’t want to call as much attention to it. “Starting a revolution,” he admitted. “Capture the flag, winner take all—respect, that is.”

“Capture the flag?”

“With Nerf guns, paintball, and in one case, a wakazaschi.”

“A what?”

“How in the world do I know something about weapons that you don’t?” Chuck dove for a spare sheet of paper and jotted his name down. It came out legible. 

She must have heard the rustling. “What are you doing?”

Making sure I’m not left-handed.”

“Um, okay.”

“Because the me in another dimension would be left-handed.”

A long pause on the other end of the line, and then Sarah sighed. “Another dimension or a mirror dimension?”

A smile broke out over Chuck’s face. “Did Sarah Walker just correct me in nerd?”

Another long pause.

When she didn’t answer for a full ten seconds, Chuck laughed. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell Casey. Speaking of Casey, you should have seen him tonight. Did you know he’s got a secret stash of _every_ single gun made post World War Two?”

“And you’re surprised by this?”

“Good point. But Sarah, it doesn’t stop there. He has Nerf guns. Not just one. _Multiple_ Nerf guns. That he names. Limited editions, too. I’m pretty sure I saw a Nerf Glock.”

Sarah yawned. “And you’re surprised by this?”

“Well, yeah,” Chuck started to say, but he stopped mid-word. “I guess not.”

“Even secret agents have hidden depths.” Another yawn, this time more pronounced. Chuck wondered if Sarah had climbed out of bed for the call. He figured not, and had to wonder why that would excite him at all. “Chuck, is there anything else to report?”

“Uh, no. You should go back to sleep. Sorry to keep you up so long.”

“No, it’s okay. How else would I know about the Nerf Glock? Good night, Chuck.”

“Good night, Sarah. Happy Halloween.”

A sleepy snicker, and she hung up. 

Chuck set his phone down, tilted his chair forward, and focused on his computer monitor. He’d swiped the security disks from the Buy More—at his own peril, as the Buy Morians hadn’t appreciated the loss of their war tapes, even to The One Bartowski—but they hadn’t told him anything salient. Laszlo had used the game as cover to grab a few supplies. Mostly snacks, and something from the small appliance section. The cameras in the store weren’t high quality enough to make out fine detail, so if Chuck wanted to know what Laszlo had taken, he’d have to visit the store himself before his therapy appointment.

His computer chirped. He turned down his music and clicked over to the mirrored account where his activity wouldn’t be on display to a series of government geeks. Immediately, a screen popped up.

No results found. Well, that sucked.

Chuck frowned and picked up his pencil so that he could tap it against his knee while he thought his next step through. He’d tracked down what felt like every Phillip Dartmoor on the planet, and he had the files covering his bed to prove it. However, his efforts had stalled and his attempts were stymied by the fact that he refused to use the government databases. 

He had no idea what game Bryce Larkin was playing. Even with Sarah’s warnings, or maybe because of them, Chuck couldn’t give up on the charismatic spy. There simply had to be more to the story. Not a single motive had popped up about why Bryce Larkin had stolen the Intersect and sent it to him, or why he would have attempted to rescue Chuck from the clutches of Peyman Alahi. So until somebody sat down and told him _why_ all of this had happened, Chuck would play it close to the vest and avoid letting the government know exactly what he was doing.

One of his problems was the paperwork. Nobody had told him just how much paperwork being a spy generated. Every day brought new bureaucratic hurdles for the team: different forms, some needing to be notarized (Chuck wondered when Sarah had had time between jaunts to take down dictators with silverware to become a notary, or if she’d stolen the notary stamp off of some poor dead legal secretary), others filed in triplicate. Eyes Only. Top Secret. Beyond Top Secret. So many official words, so many papers.

Chuck had started coding a program that would take care of the paperwork, mostly to help Sarah out. Busywork just naturally seemed to fall to her. Chuck had so much data to analyze that he could only tackle the basics, Casey was the team’s forerunner for small operations. Things were already starting to backup on Sarah’s desk, making the surface vanish entirely under a blanket of bureaucracy. She never complained, though Chuck wondered if she wanted to. First class CIA agent, she of the jet set and judo chop, chained to a desk.

It was a crying shame, really.

Even outside the office, Chuck generated paperwork. He’d started a personal log of every flash all the way from the beginning, which took up quite a bit of desk space. And at home, he had his files on the various Phillip Dartmoors eating up all of his bed space. He’d logged them into his own database so that he could code a search that would recognize patterns within the different Phillip Dartmoors. The problem was, he wasn’t sure what Bryce wanted him to know, so the searches did him absolutely no good until he could get his hands on some context.

All he had was what his gut told him, which was that he was hungry.

Chuck picked up a forgotten slice of the pizza he’d nuked before calling Sarah, and settled in to read through each file for the fifth time.

**31 OCTOBER 2007**   
**BURBANK BUY MORE**   
**10:22 PDT**

Armed with screen-shots, a satchel, and raw nerves, Chuck stepped into the Buy More. He greeted Fernando at the door with a two-handed handshake and a how’s-your-pet-rabbit, and headed into the main bay, seeking the small appliances section. The store, he saw as he hurried, hadn’t taken too much damage the night before. The rack he’d tripped over had been righted, at least.

Chuck rounded a corner and immediately leaped back with a shriek he would probably never live down.

Harry Tang, wearing a ridiculously small cowboy hat, sneered. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Chuck Bartowski, returning to our fold.”

Chuck squinted. Was that a red mark between Harry’s eyes? “Uh, not exactly. I stopped by to—”

“Heard you got your own software company,” Harry went on, steamrolling right over him. “Yet you’re still pathetic enough to waste all of your free time in a Buy More? That’s pretty sad, even for you, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry, is this your idea of customer service? Might need to retake that course, Harry.” Chuck tried to sidestep.

No dice. Harry Tang simply stepped into his path again. “I’m an assistant manager now. Nothing can touch me. And since we’re not stock-boys anymore, I have some bones to pick with you…”

At any other point in time, Chuck would probably have engaged him in a verbal battle. But right now, he simply had too much to deal with. The store was too open and vast. He was less than two hours from being forced into his first therapy session. There was a bomb-making fugitive on the loose in LA that he was partially responsible for, as he’d let the guy get away. And to add to it all, echoes of long-distance memoires of disdain for the tiny, petty man standing in front of him sprang up. Apparently, absence really didn’t make the heart grow fonder.

So Chuck pulled out his phone and punched in three numbers. “Yeah, thank you, I need the number for Buy More corporate, please. Sure, I’ll hold.”

Harry Tang went the color of raw parchment. “You wouldn’t.”

“What’s it matter?” Chuck asked. “Nothing can touch you, right? Assistant manager, isn’t that what you said? Yes, hi, I’m calling to lodge a complaint.” The last was into his phone.

In front of him, Harry glowered. “Tattle-tale,” he muttered, and stalked off.

“Missed you, too, buddy!” Chuck called after him. Into the phone, he said, “Actually, I changed my mind. Have a nice day.” He hung up, his expression shifting from politely pleasant to annoyed as he hurried toward the small appliance section. “Dickhead.”

Maybe he should go to the Beverly Hills Buy More whenever he had legitimate shopping to do. Things in Burbank too often reminded him of an episode of _Scooby-Doo_. The scenery might revolve in the background, but the action in the foreground rarely changed. It was amusing but, in the end, ultimately pointless.

Thankfully, the green-shirts all seemed too exhausted by the previous evening’s festivities to notice the presence of “The One” Bartowski, so he was left in relative peace to peruse the section of the small appliance aisle where he and Casey had spotted Laszlo. He studied the screen-shots and his own memories carefully until he was mimicking the fugitive’s actions perfectly. Grimly, he picked up Laszlo’s quarry. 

He stuffed the screen-shots back into the satchel and pulled out his phone again. This time, it only took one button. 

“Bad news,” he said when he heard Sarah pick up. “I found out what Laszlo was on a supply run for last night. I’m going to send over a picture.”

“Where are you? It sounds loud.” 

Chuck glanced at the screens around the room, where Boris Karloff had just startled some poor woman. The music was indeed a bit screechy. “I’m at the Buy More, following intuition. I’m leaving my therapy appointment soon, I promise, but you should let the FBI know to be on high alert. Laszlo is definitely building a bomb.”

He stared grimly at the kitchen timer in his hand as he hung up.

**31 OCTOBER 2007**   
**OFFICE OF DR. FARNSWORTH**   
**11:28 PDT**

When Chuck walked into Dr. Farnsworth’s waiting room, he was far more tense than he’d ever been, even while running away from Siberia with a beautiful almost-stranger. He felt a little like C-3PO, all stiff limbs and stiffer joints. He introduced himself to the receptionist, was invited to sit and wait. He stared at his hands the whole time.

When the receptionist invited him to go in, he thanked her and did so. 

What he found stopped him cold.

Maybe he’d been expecting something like Scott, his old therapist that had treated him to an A’s game (nosebleed seats, naturally) as the culmination of their time together. Or a fussy psychiatrist with a silly accent. Somebody whose face could represent the system he resented.

What he was not expecting was Dr. Amelia Farnsworth.

“You must be Charles,” she said, rising when Chuck froze in the doorway. “Gwen’s told me so much about you. It’s very nice to meet you.”

Chuck automatically shook the hand proffered. “Dr. Farnsworth?” he asked, just to make sure he hadn’t wandered into the wrong office.

“Please, just Amy. Dr. Farnsworth is my mother-in-law.” Amy waited for a beat, but Chuck didn’t move. He just kept staring. “I’m sorry, is something the matter?”

“What? Oh. No, ah, sorry. It’s just, you look so much like—”

“The woman from ‘Arrested Development?’ I know. I love that show—it’s a guilty pleasure.” Amy laughed and gestured for Chuck to come inside. When he did, she reached behind him and closed the door. “I tell everybody that I came out here to be an actress, but that was too much work, so I picked up psychiatry instead.”

Chuck forced a laugh. It helped, he noted in some distant corner of his mind, that Amy wore a no-nonsense black business suit, something that Sarah would don only if forced. Otherwise, the resemblance would just be _spooky_. Sarah’s hair was a little darker, her eyes a little less ice-blue, but whoa.

“So, have a seat, get comfortable. Sorry to go against the cliché, but I find that if I let patients lay down on a couch, they fall asleep on me.” Amy smiled as she said this, and Chuck was strangely relieved to see that her teeth were even. He sat as ordered, and wondered why his joints didn’t squeak. “I make do with just an armchair. Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Um, water?” 

“Sure.” Amy crossed to a mini-fridge in the corner. Chuck finally allowed himself to look around the room and see something beyond escape routes. The office was large, tasteful, the desk and chairs classy. The walls held a mix of Dali and Kazinsky, which told Chuck that Amy seemed to like color in her artwork, at least. The desk was reasonably neat, the nearest edge lined with picture frames facing the other way. From the number, Chuck figured that Sarah’s doppelganger probably had kids.

He nodded his thanks when Amy handed him a water glass. “So, ah, you know Agent Davenport? Ah, Gwen?”

“I do. We’ve never met, but I used to do some profiling for her when I had spare time. A _long_ time ago.” She laughed a little. Definitely had kids, Chuck observed. “I don’t normally take on cases for the government, since I don’t like the restrictions, but Gwen Davenport’s one of the best, and she speaks very highly of you. Your service record must be impressive, Mr. Carmichael.”

Chuck shrugged, a robotic movement. “It is what it is.”

“Very well. When Gwen told me about your case, I have to admit, I was fascinated. I hope I’ll be able to help you.”

Her words, unfortunately, held the opposite effect. The shock holding Chuck’s emotions back dissolved, only now instead of frustration and impotence, anger flavored the mix. Anger that Dr. Farnsworth wasn’t the sweater-vest wearing old fart he’d been hoping to shut down in his tracks. Aggravation that she looked just like Sarah. Annoyance at Gwen for putting him in this situation. Had she done this on purpose? Had she known that Sarah Walker and Amy Farnsworth had evidently been separated at birth? She’d met Sarah in the holding facility; Sarah had figured into Chuck’s stories to Gwen, since she’d been one of four humans he’d seen in five years. Only one photo of Amy would be necessary to see the eerie resemblance.

So, was Special Agent Gwen Davenport manipulating him, on top of everybody else in the damned government?

“Honestly,” Chuck said, his words bitten off, “I don’t think you’re going to be able to.”

Amy’s pleasant look remained unchanged. “May I ask why you think that?”

“I don’t want to be here,” Chuck said. “I can think of fifty other places where I’d rather be. Actually, I can think of thousands. There may be one place I want to be less than I want to be here, and that’s that godforsaken hellhole bunker wherever my dossier says I was being held. I have problems, I know that. I want them to go away or at least stop interfering with my ability to function like a normal human being. But that’s not going to happen if I’m telling you lies off of a dossier, so you’re not going to help me, and I’m not going to be helped. This is all a stupid waste of time, when I have other, more important things I could be doing.” Like stopping a renegade bomb-maker loose in Los Angeles.

“The dossier isn’t to protect you, Agent Carmichael.” Amy gave him a sympathetic look, of all things. It made Chuck want to take a page from Casey’s book of life lessons and growl. He stuck with a stubborn glare instead. “It’s to protect me should you be captured, given your status as a field agent. It was at my request that the details be suppressed.”

“Why?”

“I realize details will be different,” Amy went on, “and that may seem like a hindrance, but I promise you, we can talk openly about your interpretation of events, how you feel, how you think you’re coping, or even the persons of interest in your dossier. Details change, but the origins, the feelings and the mentality behind it, you’ll find, remain true.”

Even if her point was a valid one—and he would have to mull that over later—Chuck focused only on one thing. His dossier file hadn’t covered anybody he was allowed to mention by name. “Persons of interest?” 

“Agent Walton and Captain Case?”

“Agent Wal—” Chuck started to echo, and burst out laughing. They’d demoted Casey? And what the hell was up with the government’s cover-story department? “Walton like Sam Walton? Creative, government. Good job. But yeah, honestly, talking about her would be a little weird for me. Especially to you.”

“Why is that?” If Amy had been confused by the laughter, she didn’t show it.

To answer, Chuck merely pulled his phone from his pocket and thumbed over to the pictures folder. “Here,” he said, handing over the phone.

Amy blinked at the picture. “What on—”

“Dr. Farnsworth, meet your twin by another mother—or I’m assuming it’s another mother. Agent ‘Walton’ has never actually told me about her family background, so you two could be sisters and I wouldn’t have the first idea.”

Amy glanced from the picture to Chuck. “This is your partner?”

“The pretty one, yes. She grunts a lot less than the other one, too.”

For a long moment, Amy studied the picture, probably categorizing the same differences and similarities that Chuck had been doing for their whole conversation. “Well, if you say she’s pretty, I guess I’ll have to thank you for the compliment. But no, Agent Walton and I are not related. As far as I know.” Amy took one final look and handed the phone back. “This is all just a big coincidence, as I’m fairly certain Agent Davenport knows me only through my work.”

Chuck shrugged as he pocketed the phone. “Of all the tastefully-decorated, government contracted psychiatrist’s offices in all the towns in all the world…”

“And you walk into mine,” Amy finished. She shook her head and leaned back, tapping her pencil eraser on the legal pad across her lap. “Agent Walton is the one that found you in the bunker?”

“Yes. She got me out of there.”

“Then this really isn’t going to work.” Amy frowned. “I’ll have to refer you to one of my associates. I’ll talk to Agent Davenport right away to clear up the problem.” 

“You could take your time, I don’t mind,” Chuck said. “In fact, you could hold off for six months or so…”

Amy smiled as they both stood. “I’m sorry, Agent Carmichael. If the government feels you’re important enough for field work, they’ll want to move quickly. Therapy’s not all bad, you know. Sometimes there are proper psychiatrists who actually use real couches.”

Pessimism with the government aside, he had to smile back. He shook Amy’s hand, they made a few twin jokes on the way through the waiting room, and she saw him off into the hallway that led to the parking garage. He paused at the door to outside as he always did, taking a deep breath. With that little bit of courage fueling him, he stepped out into the sunlight.

Outside, he evaluated the experience, just to distract himself from the sheer amount of space and people around. Did he like Amy on her own or because she was the spitting image of Sarah? He’d gone in predisposed to like her, but true, she’d been funny, and a little self-deprecating. Obviously a caring individual. Would he have felt an affinity this fast if she looked more like, say, Casey?

Chuck shuddered.

Okay, he amended in his head as he started to climb the stairs to the second level of the parking garage. Maybe Casey was a little far. But if Amy had looked like anybody else, he might have at least tolerated therapy. And he couldn’t be angry about a dossier if it was just a woman looking out for her kids. The point she’d made about the details changing, but the origins and mentality staying the same was actually fairly good. Maybe it was because he had an actual computer lodged inside his, but Chuck had a whole and healthy respect for the power of the human brain.

Wait a second. The details would be different, but the origins and mentality remain the same…

The origins.

“Oh, hell,” Chuck breathed. He fumbled for his phone. It almost squirted out of his sweaty fingers, but he grabbed it before anything that would lead to Casey grumbling about requisitions forms could happen. He stabbed the appropriate button. “Hey, Sarah?”

“Chuck?” Suspicion and wariness leaked from her voice. “Aren’t you supposed to be in therapy for another half hour?”

“We, ah, adjourned early.”

“What? Why?”

Chuck winced as he missed a step and scraped up the toe of his dress shoe. He’d much rather be wearing chucks, but a first meeting with the therapist required proper attire. “I don’t know if you’d believe me even if I told you,” he said.

“Chuck?” The wariness and suspicion grew.

“She can’t take my case. It’s a long story, or actually, a really, really short one, but that’s not important. Laszlo’s file—where he was he discovered?”

After a second, he heard paper rustling. “Agent Scary recruited him,” Sarah said, her voice bemused enough to tell Chuck that she was still scanning the file. 

“How?”

“He saw Laszlo playing Tetris in an arcade at…the Santa Monica Pier.”

Halfway across the parking garage level to his car, Chuck stopped. The memory hit him harder than anything the Intersect could ever throw at him. He was yanked over time and space to Stanford, sitting in a chair across from Professor Fleming. Hearing words like “important” and “one of a kind” and “serve a vital role.” Listening to his professor wax poetic about patriotism, about being meant for more.

He’d revisited the memory only a few times over the years—if he thought about it, really sat down and ruminated, anger would inevitably begin to seep through, growing and melting together like the Blob, until it amassed into a debilitating state of impotent rage that could never have an outlet.

“Chuck?” Sarah’s voice prodded him back to the present.

“It’s the Pier,” Chuck blurted out, starting to move again. He raced for his car. “He’s going to bomb the Pier.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah—they have a huge Halloween party there every year.” Or, Chuck corrected as he rounded the hood and fumbled for his key, they had five years before. Had that changed while he’d been stuck in the bunker? “If he’s that set on getting out…”

“He’ll want to make a splash,” Sarah said. Through the phone line, he heard her scrambling, possibly to grab her gear. He climbed into his own car and threw it into reverse. “Chuck, get back to Castle, stay there, and stay downstairs!”

“What? No, I can help!”

“What’s in your head is far too valuable to be going near any bombs. You get yourself back to Castle and you stay put!”

“Sarah—”

“That is an _order_ , Chuck!”

Chuck’s tires squealed as he peeled out of the parking garage, leaving only skid marks. “The guy is going to blow up the pier when it’ll have the most impact, which is the Halloween party. Which doesn’t start until early this evening. I’ve seen the guy in person, I can help!”

“It’s not your job to help. Your job is to use the Intersect and keep it safe!”

“He’s going to blow people up, Sarah. I can’t let that happen.” He could hear shouting even as he yanked the phone away from his ear, but he didn’t care. He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, where it continued to ring at him. How the woman managed to channel her anger through electronics, he had no idea, but somehow “Jazzy Jive Ringtone 4” sounded a great deal more pissed off than usual.

He beat Casey and Sarah to the Pier only through a miracle, and a magically open parking spot nearby. By the time he arrived, he could feel the threat of a panic attack beginning to lurk at the edges of his existence, but the very real threat of a bomb at the Santa Monica Pier mercifully kept the demons at bay.

Even so, by the time Casey and Sarah ran up to him by the entrance, he was covered in sweat. “You can yell at me later,” he said, as one of his partners looked annoyed and the other ready to commit Intersecticide. “I’m not hiding away like a coward while this guy poses a real threat. Not with all of these people in danger.”

Casey glanced at his CIA compatriots and seemed to decide to ignore everybody present with, as he’d put it more than once, idiotic lady feelings. “Any sign of him?”

“No, nothing, but then, I just got here, so—”

“All right. We split up, I’ll head to the end and work my way back. Walker, you and Bartowski start at the entrance and go from there.” Casey sighed to himself and reached into his jacket. He held out a gun, butt first.

Chuck stared at the weapon, wondering why on earth Casey had mistaken him for Sarah and, consequently, what sort of head injury could possibly lead to that sort of gross error. “Um, Casey, I’m Chuck. Remember? No guns without explicit written and spoken approval—”

“It’s a tranq gun, moron. Since you insist on being a hero.” Casey rolled his eyes. “You shoot a civilian with this thing, your ass is mine. You shoot yourself with this thing, your ass is mine. You shoot Walker with this thing—”

“Yeah, I know, I know, my ass is yours.”

“I was going to say you’re Castle’s Employee of the Month. Now go. Your partner’s leaving.”

Chuck glanced over his shoulder, and swore when he saw Sarah’s blond hair disappearing into the crowd. He took off after her.

“For Dan Daly’s sake, Bartowski, put that thing away!” Casey called after him.

Chuck, realizing that running down the Santa Monica Pier in broad daylight with a gun in hand was probably one for the Bad Idea column, quickly stashed the gun into his waistband. He kept running until he caught up to Sarah.

“Sorry,” he said. “Casey had a pep talk for me. Sort of.”

Sarah scanned every inch of the pier as they walked, though her body language remained relaxed, even languid. Her jaw-line, however, screamed tension. “When we get back to Castle, you and I are going to have a long talk about following orders.”

“Will that include the need for body armor on my part or not?” Chuck scanned the interior of the arcade for signs of a psychopath with a hair-trigger.

All he saw, though, was Sarah. She jerked him around so that he faced her. He saw the same determined look he remembered from their fight by the Acropolis. “Chuck, go home.”

“I’m keeping it together,” Chuck said, though he could feel an entirely new coat of sweat starting inside his shirt. He didn’t know if it was because they might be practically on top of a bomb or because of all of the people sucking up all of the damn air. It didn’t seem to matter much. “Sarah, I can help—”

“And you can get blown up.” Sarah’s grip tightened. “Please, Chuck, go back to Castle, and stay there.”

“Sarah, have you met me?” Chuck, feeling the need to somehow put the situation back onto even footing, shifted his arm so that he could grip Sarah’s wrist. He thought he heard her breath catch, but it was probably just the Sno-Cone machine hissing. “With my luck, I’ll get kidnapped on the way to the car.”

Sarah grimaced, but didn’t argue. She gentled her grip, using it to pull him along. When she shifted it to hand-holding, Chuck gave her an alarmed look. 

“Did we just become the Rogerses again?”

“People pay less attention to couples holding hands. And Laszlo might already be looking for you.”

“And he magically won’t see me because I’m with you? Let’s face it, Sarah, you’re fairly tall for a woman, but you’re not that tall.”

“Not precisely what I meant.” Sarah kept her gaze trained off to the left; her gait slowed, her hand tensed. 

“What precisely did you—oh.” The railing hit him mid-back as Sarah nudged him into it. He’d have complained, but Sarah immediately pressed up against him. All discomfort on the planet ceased. “Um, what are you do—”

Sarah leaned in. Chuck’s heart, already cantering, began to clock overtime. He stayed stock still.

At the last moment, Sarah changed trajectory, angling away from a kiss and toward his ear. “Behind me,” she murmured. “To your right, white male, trench coat. Don’t look directly at him, but tell me, is that our target?”

Chuck forced his brain back on, trying to focus on something beyond every single point of contact between his body and Sarah’s (and there were _a lot_ of points of contact). He blinked a few times, trying not to squint too obviously. Trench Coat wasn’t hard to spot in a crowd—a trench coat outside of rush hour tended to stand out like a Trekker at a Star Wars convention—but he had a hard time focusing beyond the scent of Sarah’s shampoo, so it took a moment.

When he got a good look, however, he burst out laughing.

“Chuck?” He felt Sarah tense. 

“About your trench coat suspect—”

“What the hell are you two doing?” Casey arrived, one hand hovering near his gun. Chuck could almost convince himself that he and Sarah weren’t Casey’s intended targets.

Because he felt Sarah tense, Chuck grabbed her by the waist to prevent her from springing away and running their cover. Or so he told himself. “Spying,” he said. “Sarah thought she saw Laszlo, and she provided the necessary cover so that I could get a good look.”

Casey grunted, but refrained from snarking on just the sort of cover Sarah could provide. Chuck smiled and let Sarah go so that she could ease back.

“Of course,” he said, “we may need to get Sarah’s eyes checked.”

“What?”

“What?”

Chuck merely pointed. As he did, Trench Coat turned, and they got a good look. The target was the same height, weight, and coloring of Laszlo Mahnovski, except…

“You thought Laszlo was a woman?” Casey asked.

“Oh, come on. Give Sarah a break. She wanted to be close to me,” Chuck said as Ms. Trench Coat, having paid for her cotton candy, walked away. “It’s a curse. The Power of the Bartowski—hey, none of that now.” He’d have edged away, but Sarah had already backed him into the railing. He eyed her clenched fist. “Every time you hit me, the gaming gods kill Navi. And do you really want poor Link to wander alone?”

“Hey, numbskulls,” Casey said before Sarah could decide that she really didn’t care one way or the other about Link. “Focus. Did either of you see anything?”

We got nada. If he’s here, he’s not wearing a trench coat.”

“Nothing,” Sarah echoed, and gave him an apologetic look. “He might not be here, Chuck.”

But Chuck remembered the determination on Laszlo’s face as he’d dispatched the guards. “No, he’s here. This is definitely the place. I can feel it in my—”

“Bones?” Casey offered, rolling his eyes.

“Gut, I was going to say gut. The problem is, Laszlo’s a genius.” Chuck turned so that he was staring out into the sand all around the Pier rather into the crowds dawdling along behind Casey and Sarah. “He made so many things while they stuck him in this stupid bunker, and he disguised them as really cool things, like laser-beam lipstick tubes or lighters that are, like, a combination taser, USB drive, GPS locator, and cell phone jammer. He could disguise a bomb as _anything_. We could be practically on top of it and…” He trailed off and whirled. “On top of it!”

“What? What is it?”

“He wants to take out the whole pier, right?” Chuck gulped. “Best way to do that is take out the support structure and let gravity do the rest.”

They didn’t bother to exchange uncertain looks. Without a word, they took off running.

As he ran, dodging in an out of crowds and apologizing the whole time, Chuck called up a mental map of the pier, trying to pinpoint the best location. Where would he put a bomb, if he were going to flip his nut and randomly kill a bunch of innocent strangers?

The flash hit mid-stride. He stumbled forward, crashing to one knee and taking out a display of stuffed animals with his shoulder. Casualties flew everywhere, stuffed animals skittering across the sandy boards and bouncing into innocent passersby.

Sarah all but did a grand-jeté in the middle of the boardwalk and raced back. “What happened? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

He’d landed in a pile of pink panda bears that had done absolutely nothing to cushion his fall. Chuck coughed and tossed a sweat-shop-made toy aside. At least he hadn’t hit his head. “I’m fine, I’m fine. The flash just got me at the wrong moment.”

When he realized that his stunt had drawn a crowd, he mustered up a weak smile. Sarah yanked him away before the babbling could begin—or the shopkeeper could notice. 

“What’d you flash on?”

Um, I was trying to call up an aerial map of the pier, and I flashed on the info.”

Sarah gave him a startled look.

“Yeah, I didn’t know I could do that either. But I think I know where he’s going to hit.” 

They hit the sand. Chuck’s pace slowed; Sarah’s didn’t change. He wondered, not for the first time, how she was able to run in heels, even the sensible heeled boots she wore now. It was a mystery he would never understand about the female species. She outstripped him in only a few seconds. It was official—starting tomorrow morning, he was going to take her up on her standing offer, and go running with her. This was just ridiculous.

Just before she reached the underbelly of the pier, where Casey waited for them both, she glanced over her shoulder and lifted an eyebrow at him.

When he arrived, he was panting. “A month ago, my entire world was only a few meters long,” he said before Casey could start. “And running on sand sucks.”

Casey snorted, but thankfully: again, no comment. “How do we do this?”

“There are two locations he could be,” Chuck admitted. “If he wants to hit the arcade directly, he’ll be…” He knelt and quickly sketched a map in the sand, marking two spots with an X each. “There. And here’s where he’ll be if he wants to take out the whole Pier.”

Casey studied the map for a second and nodded. “I’ll take the Pier location. You take the arcade, Walker.”

“Go with Casey, Chuck. There’s more of him—he’ll make a better shield.” Sarah gave Chuck a tight-lipped smile.

“You know, I keep telling him exactly the same thing.” Chuck returned the smile with a grimace and took off after Casey, while Sarah split to head to the location closer to the water. 

Chuck told himself that it was only his imagination, but under the Pier, the temperature plummeted to Siberian levels. Sound from the crowds over their heads was muffled by the boards, and the lack of direct sunlight plunged the world into gloom. 

It also reeked to high heaven. That much, he knew, was not his imagination. Nobody who’d ever visited the Pier could forget that smell. He tried to take shallow breaths through his mouth as he followed Casey. The other man kept one hand on his gun hilt, crossing the sand with soundless long strides. Chuck tried to mimic him, but again, he rolled a proverbial one for stealth. He was positive a Tyrannosaurus Rex would be quieter across the sand.

“Stay close,” Casey said sotto voce as they approached the site. “I don’t know if he’s got a weapon, but if he breached Castle, he’ll definitely have something from our armory.”

“Yeah, about that—”

“Shh.”

“No, Casey, the weapons stash at Castle—”

Sarah’s yell cut him off mid-sentence. When it was followed by grunting that could only indicate a fight, the two men didn’t think. They just ran for it.

They sprinted across the sand. Chuck’s heart had literally stopped. He was also pretty sure he had quite breathing, and his mind had emptied completely, leaving nothing but a blank space between his ears. The only thing left was fear. 

He ran practically on top of Casey’s heels, weaving in and out of the pillars. At some point, he must have grabbed the tranq gun from his waistband. When he glanced down, it was in his hand, but he didn’t remember how it got there.

Casey beat Chuck out by a hair. He rounded the pillar and skidded, kicking sand in an arc. Chuck, who rounded the same pillar the other way, did exactly the same thing, so that they formed yet another lethal triangle. Only this time, it was Sarah behind held captive by the crazy person with the gun. And instead of looking completely terrified, as Chuck had, she seemed plenty pissed off about it.

And instead of looking grim, as Mei-Ling Cho had, Laszlo Mahnovski looked pretty pleased with himself—especially since he was holding a gun to Sarah’s temple. Chuck wished for one blinding second, before all thought vanished, that he knew more about guns. Why couldn’t the Intersect have included more pertinent data on guns and how to disable them? He couldn’t tell if that was a gun that had been in the Castle’s armory or not.

Sarah wasn’t looking at Chuck, but at Casey. Her entire body was tense, and she had sand stuck to the knees of her jeans. Laszlo had an arm around her neck, but it was mostly the gun immobilizing her. For now. “He got the drop on me,” she said between her teeth. 

Chuck glanced up, saw the harness rig at the top of a column. Trust Sarah to be completely literal.

“Agents Rainer and Fitzgerald, nice of you to join us.” Laszlo, despite the cool, fetid air, was sweating just as much as Chuck. Was that a common affliction among the bunkerized? “It’s a very nice stronghold you have here in Burbank—they made a few changes to my original plans, the idiots—but still, nice and easy to breach.” 

Chuck felt something in his stomach sink. Had his ploy worked? 

Casey edged forward. “I hope you at least enjoyed the visit,” he growled. “Put the gun down and drop the blonde.”

“That’s not how this works,” Laszlo said, mutinously tightening his grip on both the gun and Sarah. She didn’t grunt or struggle. In fact, the pissed off expression didn’t change. It almost seemed like she were waiting for something. “See, the way this works is that you two put _your_ guns down, and I’ll maybe let the blonde—or Agent Winter, if you prefer to be a little more politically correct—go.”

Casey snorted. Chuck figured he ranked “being politically correct” up there with “liking democrats.”

“The home office tells me you’re supposed to be a genius,” Casey said, since Chuck didn’t think he should speak and make things worse. “But from where I stand, you’re pretty much a moron who can’t do math. Two guns to your one, egghead. Drop it.”

“Oh, we’re doing math now, are we?” Laszlo laughed, and maybe Chuck was projecting, but the giggle sounded a bit…unhinged. He began to sweat anew at the thought of Sarah so close to a madman with a gun. “Here’s an equation for you.”

Chuck and Casey waited.

“One gun, one bullet, Agent Winter’s head. That enough math for you?”

A beat. “Seriously?” Chuck asked, speaking for the first time. His voice ratcheted up the scale and back down. “That’s your brilliant equation? I thought you were supposed to be a genius.”

“ _Chuck_ ,” Sarah said.

“What? So Casey gets to piss off the madman with the gun, but I can’t?”

“Madman?” Laszlo snarled, and turned—yanking Sarah around in a way that made Chuck’s breath clog in his throat—toward Chuck. “I’m not a madman!” His laugh proved otherwise. “I used to be sane. Once upon a time. Back before the government decided I was _property_ and stuck me away for the rest of my life.”

“And that’s reason to shoot Agent ‘Winter’ in the head?” Casey growled. “Put the gun down, Mahnovski.”

“No!” 

Sarah winced and rolled her eyes when Laszlo jabbed her temple with the gun. “No!” Laszlo said again, continuing to jerk Sarah around as he shifted his perspective from Chuck to Casey. “No, you don’t understand what it’s like when they’re in your head, and you’re nothing but a tool.”

Put the gun down, Laszlo. We have you outnumbered.”

Laszlo’s hand actively shook with either fear or rage. The gun barrel wobbled against Sarah’s head; Chuck saw her grit her teeth. “No! I put the gun down, and they’re going to put me back in the bunker, and you don’t know what that’s like. You don’t know.”

“Actually,” and Chuck felt a surge of courage come out of nowhere and propel him a step forward, “you’d be surprised.”

Three things happened at once. Laszlo, startled, turned toward Chuck, possibly to ask what on earth he was talking about. Sarah hissed Chuck’s name. 

And the gun dripped.

All three agents and Laszlo watched two small drops of water slide right out of the end of the barrel and fall for hours before they splattered soundlessly on the sand. For a full nanosecond of an eternity, nobody spoke.

Chuck was the first to break the silence. “Is that…is that a water gun?”

Before Laszlo could answer, Sarah sprang into action. The water gun went flying. So did Laszlo.

He hit the sand with a thud that should have shaken the very pillars holding the pier up. Sand typically made for a somewhat softer landing. Somebody apparently forgot to mention this to Sarah Walker. Laszlo plowed into the ground at full speed. Fear, or maybe just desperation, made the bunkered genius scramble immediately onto all fours and try to take a running start.

Which was when Casey fired.

Loudly. Without warning. The shot cut through the muffled silence under the pier, and thoroughly startled Chuck. As a result, he tensed—and so did his trigger finger. The gun had a surprisingly small recoil for such an imposing firearm.

Absolute horror welled deep inside him as his gaze slowly, slowly followed the gun’s trajectory, down the gun sights, across the sand, up Sarah’s denim-clad legs, up her leather jacket, and finally ending on her chest. 

Or rather, specifically, the tranquilizer dart sticking out of said chest.

Sarah glanced down at the dart and sighed. “Really, Chuck?” she asked. She then flopped face-first into the sand, landing with a bigger thud than even Laszlo had.

Casey looked from the moaning psychopath on the sand to his downed partner on the sand. Finally, he leveled an unimpressed stare at Chuck. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself, dimwit?”

“Um.” Chuck finally lowered the gun, shock making him dizzy. He tried to smile apologetically, but his face felt frozen. “Missed it by that much?”

Casey grunted.


	17. Tremors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened. — _General George S. Patton_

**31 OCTOBER 2007**   
**UNDER THE SANTA MONICA PIER**   
**13:12 PDT**

“So you’re telling me that after all we went through, all that combing the pier, running around like a bunch of hooligans, your little stunt with the stuffed animals, and getting my partner and your partner shot, you _forgot_ that there’s a bomb somewhere under the Santa Monica Pier just ready to take out innocent civilians?” If it were at all possible, John Casey would have been breathing fire.

“I had other things on my mind!” Though it killed his back by inches, Chuck forced himself to lower Sarah’s body slowly, rather than dropping her. He propped her up against the pillar, where she sat, slack and limp, like some life-sized kewpie doll. It made his stomach roil; he forced himself to focus. “And it’s not like it’s entirely my fault. Who was it that shot the guy who knew where the bomb was?”

Casey dumped Laszlo’s slack form in the sand. “How was I supposed to know that he was going to pass out at the sight of a little blood?”

“He’s been stuck in a bunker for ten years.” Chuck glared right back. “Us ‘bunker pals,’ we tend to develop these pesky little things called phobias!”

“A phobia about gunshot wounds?” Casey snorted. “If I’d shot you, you’d still be awake and just as annoying as ever. Now find the damn bomb, Bartowski!”

“What, suddenly I’m a bomb dog?” Chuck rolled his eyes, but he had to admit that he had a better probability of seeing into Laszlo’s twisted mind than Casey did. And Casey had better field medicine training than he did, which meant that he was the more logical choice to look after the injured Laszlo and the unconscious Sarah.

Still, that didn’t exactly make Chuck enthusiastic to go wandering around in dark, open spaces by himself, especially since it had occurred to him that the bomb Laszlo was building could very well be a landmine. Even though chances of Laszlo actually using a landmine were slim, as it had a pretty contained blast radius and wouldn’t take out much more than the person stopping on it, the idea festered and pretty much wouldn’t let go. He stepped almost delicately across the sand.

Unfortunately, he didn’t think to wait until he was out of Casey’s line of sight.

“ _What_ are you doing, Bartowski?”

Chuck tried to hide his wince. “Nothing.”

Casey’s stare didn’t waver.

“Fine. I was thinking, what if it’s a land mine? Which is ridiculous, I know, but—”

“It’s not a land mine! Find the damn bomb before I shoot you. Do I have to do everything myself?”

“Why not? That seems to be the only way you’ll be satisfied with anything.” Chuck rolled his eyes and began to search around. Laszlo would want to be near the blast seat of the bomb until it went off, which meant that the bomb had to be near. The problem was, there was nothing around but sand, clumps of disgusting kelp that looked like they might be single-handedly responsible for starting a zombie apocalypse or two, and pillars. Lots and lots of pillars. Chuck checked behind every one.

When he came back, Casey had finished binding up the gunshot wound in Laszlo’s shoulder. “I’ve still got it,” the NSA agent said, his voice smug. “An inch to the left and he would have had complications, but—what is it?”

I can’t find the bomb,” Chuck said.

“It’s got to be around here somewhere. Fine, stay with the bodies—” Chuck’s stomach tilted to hear them referred to as corpses. “—While I have a look around. If Laszlo wakes up and tries to get away, tranq him.” Casey shoved the tranq gun, which he’d taken away from Chuck earlier, back into the other man’s hand.

Chuck stared at it and tried not to lose his breakfast.

Once Casey had stalked off, muttering about incompetence, Chuck tucked the gun back into his waistband, triple-checking to make sure the safety was on so that he wouldn’t do something stupid like shoot himself and join Sarah in unconsciousness. He knelt and checked Sarah’s pulse again. Casey had assured him that nothing in Sarah’s file indicated any allergies to the tranq darts, so once the drugs in her system wore off, she would be fine.

“Pissed as hell at you,” Casey had added with undisguised glee, “but fine.”

Still unconscious and propped up against the pillar, Sarah simply looked exhausted. It made little sense—after all, Chuck had seen to it that she was now getting rest, whether she liked it or not. She could have at least looked peaceful or relaxed. It was like the universe was trying to make him feel as bad as it possibly could. Chuck could have pointed out that at this stage, it was getting a bit excessive. The universe had, after all, already stuck him in a bunker and given him a gun-happy NSA agent for a partner.

Of course, they’d also given him Sarah Walker. Maybe the universe did have a sense of humor.

To Chuck’s left, Laszlo stirred. Casey had stripped off the other man’s shirt to administer the field dressing over the bullet wound, and the man’s skin was fish-belly white against the tan T-shirt-turned-bandages. Just like Chuck’s own skin had been when Sarah had first pulled him from Siberia.

Not for the first time, Chuck wondered if, after ten years, he too would have snapped in a way that meant damage to everything around him, even people. Before Bryce had sent him the Intersect, his daily routine hadn’t changed, and he hadn’t protested. He’d just continued to follow Mr. Carver’s directions and play video games or work on gadgets in his off-time. If Sarah hadn’t showed up, would he still be there? Would he ever think about things like getting sand lodged in his dress shoes or down the back of his pants?

He’d never be under the Santa Monica Pier with a maybe-live bomb, an unconscious fugitive, and a tranqued CIA agent, that was for sure. Overhead, the boards rumbled as the West Coaster brought a new group of screaming people around Pacific Park. Chuck glanced up absently, and froze.

“Uh, Casey?” he called.

He heard the other man’s footsteps pattering across the sand before Casey answered. “What is it?”

“I, uh, I found the bomb.”

“Where?”

Chuck pointed.

After a moment, Casey growled, a small, almost silent noise. “He got the drop on me,” he said, mimicking Sarah (Chuck wasn’t sure Sarah’s voice was actually that high-pitched, but he’d learned only to correct Casey on the days when he wasn’t feeling particularly fond of keeping all of his fingers). “Fantastic. Way to be literal, Walker.”

“In her defense, it was a clever use of—”

“I’m going to call EOD, get a squad down here. Can you tell if it’s armed?”

Chuck squinted at the bomb, which was wedged high up where the pillar intersected with the boardwalk. “Uh, not from here, no. Want me to climb up there?” He hoped not.

Casey shook his head. “Get Walker and the egghead out of here. I’ll call in back-up, get the area cleared—”

Something beeped. Even Chuck, for whom computers were just a way of life, heard the ominous undertones to that beep. He and Casey turned very slowly.

Laszlo grinned. “If you were wondering, the bomb’s armed,” he said, holding up a small device in his good hand—a device that Chuck was positive hadn’t been there a minute before. “And yes, I _did_ set up a chain of them because, hey, genius here. Good luck, boys!”

Casey snarled. Before Chuck knew what was going on, Casey had reached over, yanked the tranq gun out of Chuck’s jeans, and shot the geek lying on the sand.

As Laszlo’s head rolled back, Chuck rounded on his partner. “Was that really necessary? He could’ve told us how to defuse the bomb!”

“He’s a sociopath, Bartowski. The only thing he’s going to tell us is whatever we want to hear, and then he’ll just blow us up anyway.” Casey kicked Laszlo’s hand out of the way and grabbed the device, scowling. He tossed it to Chuck. “Get anything?”

Chuck squinted, but the Intersect provided no help. The trigger was nothing but a small black panel with a red button. He turned his attention to the pillar that Laszlo had used to rig the nucleus of the bomb. How had the other man gotten up that…oh, that was how. “I’d need to get a better look,” he said, his voice absent.

When he grabbed the first rung, Casey’s eyes widened. He grabbed a handful of Chuck’s shirt and hauled him down. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Getting a look at the bomb.” Chuck tried to shake off Casey’s grip. “Look, we don’t know how long Laszlo set the timer for, or if he’s bluffing. The only way to find out is if we go up there. Call your FBI buddies or whatever, see if you can get the pier evacuated. I’ll go up, get a look, come back down.”

“You think I’m letting the Intersect anywhere near a live bomb? Get out of here, Bartowski! Take Walker if you feel you must, but I want you out of range right now.”

Chuck tried to struggle out of Casey’s grip once more. Again, no dice. “It’s me versus hundreds of innocent civilians,” he said. “I’m going up there.”

“No, you’re—” 

“The longer we stand here arguing, the more likely it is that the bomb’s going to go off and we’ll get blown up! Let me go!” Chuck used the surprise on Casey’s face to wrench himself free. The sound of ripping fabric made him wince, but it wasn’t like he was particularly attached to the shirt. The CIA had picked it out for him.

He scrambled up the bars that Laszlo had drilled into the pillar, muttering under his breath. “Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down.” Wouldn’t it just be fantastic if he’d somehow managed to add batophobia to his ongoing list?

“Just so you know, when you get down, I’m going to shoot you myself!” Casey called after him, even as he pulled out his cell phone to request the proper tactical teams.

“Look at the bright side,” Chuck told himself, deliberately not looking down, “I’ll probably die from falling off the pillar before then.”

His brain must really be a dark place to consider falling from a great height and dying “a bright side.”

As he climbed, pausing to wipe his hands on his pants every few rungs, the world darkened. At first, he thought it was only his overactive imagination causing trouble, but a quick glance proved that the recesses under the boards were just darker than everywhere else. Creepy, he decided, and absolutely perfect for housing a bomb. He hauled himself up the last couple of feet and stepped tentatively onto the beam running parallel to the ground and to the boards overhead, putting himself face-to-face with an active and armed bomb.

Admittedly, it wasn’t as frightening as he had anticipated. There was still a pressing desire to soil his trousers, but it wasn’t as overpowering as he might have expected. The bomb itself wasn’t actually much bigger than a boat engine of all things, and most of it was hidden from view by flat, black panels. Wires ran all over the place, even along the underside of the boards above his head, scuttling in at least five different directions like spiders. Other bombs, Chuck figured. Part of the chain reaction.

The whole device appeared to be controlled by a laptop that was sitting open atop the beam, with a countdown reading down. And computers were Chuck Bartowski’s forte, which lessened the terrifying part of it all somewhat.

Besides, the bomb wasn’t actually the scariest thing about all of this. No, that would be the fall. Especially since Chuck ignored the chant going through his head and glanced down to make sure Casey and Sarah were still all right.

Immediately, his head spun. He latched onto the pillar until it stopped, whimpering a little. “High,” he said to nobody. “Very, _very_ high. Why did I want to be a hero, again?”

Maybe it was the universe helping him out, but at that moment, happy laughter drifted down through the boards. A family up on the pier, enjoying a holiday together.

“Oh, right,” Chuck said, and swallowed to wet his throat again. Ignoring the newest coat of sweat and his own shaking limbs, he inched forward toward the laptop.

“Is it armed?” Casey called.

Chuck didn’t dare look down again. “Yeah, and he’s got it on a countdown!”

“How long?”

Chuck blinked at the numbers, hoping he was wrong. “Um…less than five minutes?”

Casey swore. “Get down from there, Bartowski! Now!”

“No, wait—” Chuck inched closer to the laptop, and by default, the bomb. There was something on the bottom of the screen…a line of text. ENTER COMMAND. “I think Laszlo gave himself a back door to stop the bomb in case something went wrong!”

“I don’t care! Get down here! That’s an order!”

Fear should have made him want to curl up in a little ball by this point. Instead, Chuck’s fingers itched for the laptop keyboard. “No, Casey, I think I can hack it.”

He couldn’t be sure because all of his attention was focused on the laptop, but Casey might have begun climbing the rungs to come up and drag him down forcefully. “When we get back to Castle, you and I are going to have a long talk about following orders!”

“You too, eh?” Chuck muttered, mostly to himself. In the back of his mind, he flashed through Laszlo’s file, searching his memory for something, anything that could help. “Are you really going to waste your time trying to change my mind, or are you going to let me defuse this bomb? You could be getting people off of the pier, you know. Just in case I screw up.”

He heard a growl, didn’t bother to decipher it. His fingers began to fly over the keys.

Ten years in a bunker meant two things: very little social interaction, and plenty of time for video games. Chuck would have bet his last dollar that he and Laszlo had probably played the same games at some point, had probably harbored some of the same thoughts. But was it enough?

He got through the first line of defense pretty easily.

4:12.

The second line of defense proved a little trickier. And the typo in the second volley of code didn’t help. Chuck could feel precious seconds slipping away as he typed in the corrected code.

3:24.

The laptop began to whirr—a sign that overheating might be near. Was that Laszlo’s big plan? An overheated laptop to set off the bombs?

Chuck broke through the third line of defense only by luck and the fact that his ex-girlfriend liked Everquest. He himself hadn’t played, but nights of listening to her muttering under her breath while he tried to study came in handy now.

2:02.

On the other side of the laptop, a whining noise started. Again, Chuck felt the distinct need to wet himself. He focused his attention on the laptop, muttering under his breath, and cursing whenever he screwed up with the code. If he hadn’t spent hours poring over Laszlo’s designs the day before, the thing would have already blown up and the Santa Monica Pier would be an official disaster zone…

Thinking of all the families, all the couples and the anglers just enjoying a Halloween day on the pier made him type faster.

1:15.

The whine increased.

“Bartowski!” Casey had returned. “Get down from there!”

“Stay on target, stay on target,” Chuck muttered, ignoring him completely.

The timer up in the corner shifted from green to red as it hit 0:59, and began to count down. 0:58. 0:57. 0:51.

Chuck’s fingers began to fly even faster.

He was eyeball to eyeball with a thirty count when he finished the last line of code. Knowing Laszlo, if he got this line wrong, there wouldn’t be a mocking “Ah, ah, ah, you didn’t say the magic word” banner across the laptop. For some reason, he had a feeling that if he’d gotten anything wrong on this code, the bomb would blow.

0:23.

His finger hovered over the RETURN key. This was not the time to be a coward.

0:18.

0:15.

0:14.

0:11.

“If this doesn’t work, I’m dead either way,” Chuck told himself. They weren’t the most reassuring final words, but they would have to do. He pressed his finger to the RETURN key, squeezed his eyes closed, and prayed.

He hit the key.

The whine increased.

For an eon, Chuck stayed exactly as he was, crouched over the laptop, his hand poised over the keyboard, his eyes scrunched shut, and his body tensed, waiting for the blast.

It never came. The whine increased again, in pitch and tone—and died abruptly.

After a moment, one of Chuck’s eyes opened. His eyeball wheeled around as he took in details. If the bomb _had_ exploded and he somehow hadn’t noticed it, heaven or hell or purgatory or whatever it was looked bizarrely like the seamy underbelly of the Santa Monica Pier. And if he was going to spend just as much time in the afterlife sweating as he had while living, well, what was the point?

“Am I dead?” he wondered aloud, opening his other eye.

“No, but you will be!” Casey sounded both frustrated and relieved. Chuck leaned over slightly to look down at the NSA agent, who looked positively diminutive from this height. Of course, the fact that he _looked_ tiny did nothing to minimize the annoyed look Casey shot Chuck now. “Get down from there!”

“Ah, give me a minute.” Abruptly, Chuck’s limbs melted into a substance somewhere between jelly and water. He collapsed back against the pillar, barely holding on with limp fingers. Had he really just…defused a bomb? Had he, Charles Bartowski, reject spy, just saved countless individuals aboard the pier by outwitting a madman and defusing a bomb?

Chuck pinched himself. It hurt. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or mystified by that.

His cell phone rang. With a shaking hand, he pulled it out and answered. “Hello?”

“Bartowski!” Casey’s voice sounded even more annoyed through the phone. “Is the bomb still active?”

“N-no. I disabled it.”

“Good. Now get the hell down here before you fall and break your idiot neck.” 

“I, ah, really don’t think climbing right now is a good idea,” Chuck said, watching the way tremors of disbelief, relief, and adrenaline ran up and down his thighs. He kept his legs wrapped around the beam for support. “Give me a minute?”

“Sure, fine, take all the time you need, up close to a bomb.” Very few people could convey an eye-roll through words. Casey was one of the lucky few. Chuck rolled his own eyes in return. He’d disabled the damned bomb, after all.

“Oh, hey.” Casey’s voice shifted from annoyance to surprise. “Looks like Walker’s waking up.”

“Is she?” Chuck hung up and scrambled for the rungs, hurrying down faster than he would have thought possible with his barely functional limbs. He landed in the sand and immediately jogged over to where they’d stashed the unconscious duo.

Sarah hadn’t moved. But Casey was standing over her with his arms crossed over his chest, and a huge grin on his face. “Sucker,” was all he said. “Now grab Walker and clear the area before the FBI arrives. I don’t want them seeing you.” 

He had a valid point. Chuck knew his identity had been all but erased by the government. The fewer agents that saw him, the better for his cover. And if nobody saw Sarah unconscious, maybe the fact that he’d shot her wouldn’t go on report. He knelt next to her once more and, mentally apologizing every step of the way, angled her so that she was facedown. “How are you going to explain the deactivated bomb?”

“Magic,” Casey said, rolling his eyes. “I’ll handle the FBI. You worry about following orders for once in your damned life.”

Chuck rolled his eyes. “I’m glad you survived, too, Casey,” he said, his voice dripping with false sincerity. Casey’s reply was lost as he pulled Sarah to a standing position and maneuvered her over his shoulder. Once she was secure, he turned. “We’ll be down the beach a little ways until she wakes up. Even in southern California, they give you looks if you walk down the street with unconscious women over your shoulders. Trust me, I know.”

“That was a textbook fireman’s carry. Where’d you learn how to do that?”

“I did attend a little basic training before they shipped me off to rot in the cold.” Chuck glanced over at the distinct wail of sirens. “Sounds like your backup’s finally here. Have fun with the Feds, Casey. What is it they say, better late than never?”

Before Casey could out-sarcasm him, he headed off across the sand, the deadweight of his unconscious partner and rescuer settled across his shoulders. It was almost as heavy as the guilt he carried along with Sarah.

**31 OCTOBER 2007**   
**CHEZ** **BARTOWSKI/WALKER**   
**19:42 PDT**

Ellie’s annual Halloween party always started at seven o’clock, but Chuck figured he was allowed to be a little fashionably late, especially since he _had_ arrived at seven. It had simply taken him twenty-three minutes to peel his fingers off of the steering wheel of his car. Ten more minutes had been necessary to force him from the vehicle, and another seven had been spent lurking in the entryway. Now, after a minute of standing not outside the front door, but his old bedroom window, he tentatively raised his free hand and knocked.

The party spilled, as these events inevitably did, into the courtyard, so that he was surrounded by a litany of doctors pretending to be everything from the generic cat and ghost costumes to a few Victorian lords and ladies wandering around. Music boomed from a DJ table set up on the other side of the courtyard.

Even so, Sarah heard the knock. A moment or so passed before the window blind parted a crack. Sarah’s eye appeared. There was a brief pause before the window opened and was pushed outward an inch or two in invitation.

Shrugging to himself, Chuck pulled the window open and climbed in. He held his right hand behind his back. It was probably a useless measure with a super secret agent like Sarah, but he already felt a little foolish, so why change anything now? 

She didn’t speak when he came in. She just crossed her arms over a black T-shirt, her expression absolutely unreadable as she leaned against her dresser.

“Hello to you, too,” Chuck said, reaching behind him to close the window. “How’s your head? I, ah, hope the headache didn’t last too long?”

“I took some Advil.” Sarah’s eyes moved up and down, studying all of him. He’d changed into a white shirt and jeans for the party, nothing special, and nothing meriting that level of scrutiny. “Where’s your costume?”

“What? My cost—oh, yeah. That. It’s out in the courtyard somewhere, I imagine, with Morgan. We’ll debut it later.”

“You and Morgan have matching costumes?”

“Not really matching so much as it’s the same costume.” When she gave him a confused look, Chuck shrugged. “You’ll have to see it to really believe it. But that’s not why I’m here. I came to apologize.”

“Chuck—”

“Because I really, really screwed up today, and—”

“Chuck.”

“No,” Chuck said, holding up a hand. “Let me get this out. All that stuff you said awhile back about how partners should always be able to trust each other was true, and then I go and do something stupid, and I just—”

“Chuck!” Sarah, her patience seemingly gone, crossed over in two strides and grabbed his arms. “You really don’t have to apologize. You’ve apologized six times—seven now, actually.”

“I’m sorry,” Chuck said.

“And that makes eight.” Sarah gentled her grip and rubbed her hands down his arms, just the once. “Chuck, it’s okay. Nobody got hurt, I’m fine, and it was an accident. I already forgave you.”

“But I feel bad that—”

“Accidents happen,” Sarah interrupted, her voice firm. “We’ll all just be more careful in the future, and maybe keep you away from tranq guns until you’ve passed Casey’s Gun Club criteria. Okay? No more freaking out about this.”

He wanted to keep apologizing until he was blue in the face, but Sarah’s set expression told him that nothing of the sort was ever going to happen. So he just nodded. “Okay. No more freaking out about this.”

“Good. Now tell me what you’re hiding behind your back.”

Chuck mustered up a small smile. It fell short of being truly amused, but it at least landed in the ballpark. “Well, I brought you a couple of apology presents.”

“Chuck, I already told you, there’s absolutely no need to—”

“Too late.” Chuck’s smile gained a little more authenticity. “I already bought them, so now you’re stuck with them. Do you at least want to know what they are?”

Sarah was quiet for a long moment. Her expression had once again grown unreadable, but it was less of an angry unreadable. Now he figured she was trying to hide her puzzlement, something she did when he truly went off on geek tangents. He waited her out.

Finally, she sighed and smiled. “I shouldn’t encourage you.”

“And yet.”

“And yet,” Sarah echoed. “I want to know. What is an appropriate apology gift?”

“Well, first.” Chuck rummaged behind his back. His left hand emerged holding a DVD case, which he extended toward her. “A little humor. The hostage situation isn’t exactly like what we faced today, but…well…”

Sarah wrinkled her nose at the title and flipped the box over to read the synopsis. “‘Speed?’”

“Got a hostage situation?” Chuck asked solemnly. “Shoot the hostage.”

He saw just the smallest flicker of a smile before Sarah managed a somber look. “I’m glad to see you’re already finding this funny.”

“Let’s face it. At some point down the road, it’s going to be hilarious. We’ll crack a few ribs laughing, probably, knowing us. And yes, it’s probably too soon to start now, but ‘Speed’ will definitely help the process along. We’ll watch it sometime. You’ve been around me long enough that my Keanu impression probably won’t scare you off. Now, for the serious part.”

Wordlessly, he pulled his right hand from behind his back and held it out to her.

“I know I’ve already apologized eight times, so this will just have to make nine. I’m really sorry, Sarah, that I hit you with that dart.”

Sarah hadn’t moved. She stared at the offering. When she lifted her gaze to his face, finally, her expression was confused and wary. “How on earth did you know that gardenias were my favorite?”

“Oh, that’s easy. I hacked your file.”

Sarah’s face immediately closed off.

“And I’m really just kidding about that,” Chuck said, hurrying on. Sarah had been more than closemouthed about her past, but up until that point, he truly hadn’t realized the depth of her need for privacy. “I didn’t hack your file, I promise. It was mostly a guess, really. We passed a lot of flower stands when you were dragging me all around Thessaloniki, pretending to be tourists. And you always stopped to smell the gardenias.”

He realized that he was still standing with the flowers held out to her. “And, ah, are you going to take them? They really are my way of saying sorry—that’s ten—for everything I put you through today, and for making you the butt of Casey’s jokes for the foreseeable future.”

Apparently, he and Sarah put different amounts of stock in Casey’s jokes because this didn’t even faze her. Instead, she wordlessly took the bouquet and promptly did the girliest thing he’d seen her do (besides putting on makeup for their different missions). She buried her face in the flowers. Chuck’s eyebrows went up.

They went up farther still when she hugged him.

Maybe he was spending too much time around trained operatives. When she moved toward him, he tensed for an attack, but Sarah merely burrowed in. After an awkward pause, he hugged her back.

A short knock on the door made both of them jump.

Without waiting for a reply, Ellie poked her head in. Her eyes widened, as Chuck and Sarah weren’t a great deal less than obvious as they jumped apart. The _Speed_ DVD clattered to the floor. Chuck could feel his face going bright red. “Uh, hi, Ellie.”

“Well, hey, Chuck.” Ellie’s suspicious look darted from one to the other. “I didn’t see you come in.”

“I just got here. I came by to see Sarah and give her—”

“The flowers that I left at the office,” Sarah interrupted. She had her “cover” smile on, Chuck noticed. “It really was very sweet of him—I was upset that I’d forgotten them, and he saw my window was open. I was just saying thank you.”

“Uh-huh.” Again, Ellie looked from Chuck to Sarah and back again, as if she wasn’t certain she bought the story or not. When they gave her innocent smiles, she seemed to shrug to herself. “Anyway, sorry to barge in on your, ah, moment there, but have you seen the back-up corkscrew? Devon got the parrot-shaped one stuck in a bottle of red, and I fear it’s a lost cause.”

“I think it’s in the junk drawer, between the old coupon book and the colored pencils,” Sarah said, frowning as she tried to recall.

“Oh, that’s great. Thanks. I have no idea where I’d be without that crazy memory of yours.” Ellie smiled at both of them and turned to go. Mid-turn, she paused, and swiveled back. “Don’t hide in here all night, you two. You really should come out and join the party.”

She closed the door behind her.

Chuck waited approximately two seconds before he attempted to speak. “Did I just see my sister wearing little but strategically placed garlands?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s wearing a bikini under there,” Sarah assured him, bending to pick up the DVD she’d dropped. “And if you think that’s bad, just wait until you see what her boyfriend’s wearing.” She smiled.

“It’s probably not as bad seeing as he’s not my sister,” Chuck said. “I’d better go. You know, join the party, try to fight some of my inner demons by being a social creature.”

Sarah waited until he was almost to the door. “If it gets to be too much, let me know. I’ll make excuses for you, and you’re more than welcome to come in here and hide if you need to. Just, ah, give me fifteen minutes to get my costume on before you come barging in.”

“Okay. Come find me when you do, I’ll introduce you to Morgan and to our costume. You’ll love it.”

“Sure.”

“Oh,” and Chuck paused at the door, “and this makes for apology number eleven, but I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“When you were unconscious and I had to get you away before the FBI got there, I sort of maybe copped a feel.” Sarah’s eyes went wide. Quickly, Chuck held up both hands. “But it was an accident, I swear, so—sorry. And yes, that’s twelve. I think I’ll go now.”

He fled before Sarah could remember that she was armed.

**31 OCTOBER 2007**   
_**CHEZ** _ **BARTOWSKI/WALKER**   
**20:23 PDT**

Devon found him first, unsurprisingly. Though the man didn’t live at Ellie’s place full time (Sarah had told Chuck that Ellie and Devon spent half of the time in Echo Park and the other half at Devon’s admittedly less awesome apartment a couple of miles away), the mantle of the host had fallen to him. Probably because Sarah, the rightful co-host of the party, was still fighting off the final effects of the tranquilizer dart. 

“Chuck, hey!” Devon, wearing only as much as it took not to get arrested in public places, appeared at Chuck’s elbow with a couple of beers in hand. “Glad you could make it! How’ve ya been?”

Chuck took the beer. “What _aren’t_ you wearing?”

“Like it?” Devon wrapped a companionable arm around Chuck’s shoulders and pulled the other man out into the courtyard so they could make the rounds of the party. Chuck wasn’t sure which made him more uncomfortable—the sheer amount of people jockeying for space, or being half-hugged by an almost-nude man. It was a close tie, he decided. “I convinced Ellie that this was the year to go as Adam and Eve. Awesome, right? Hey, check out my snake.”

“I’m okay, Devon, I really don’t need to—oh, you mean _that_ snake.”

Devon patted the head of the giant rubber snake making its way across his broad and cut shoulders. “I named him Crawly.”

Chuck squinted. “Really? I think Steve might be a better name.”

“Steve?” Devon considered it. “I like that. Awesome. Hey, anyway, like I said, I’m glad you made it. I can’t wait to see this space penis costume Ellie’s been talking about.”

“Sandworm. It’s a sandworm.”

“Uh-huh. Also, some of the buddies and I are carpooling up to the big Stanford-UCLA game next week, and we’ve got spots open in the cars. Want in, Stanford man? We promise to go easy on you when you lose horribly.” Devon gave him a rakish grin and nodded over at an acquaintance as they walked.

Chuck felt the need to guzzle half of his beer. If the Halloween party in his sister’s Echo Park apartment was threatening to shut down his system, he imagined that the big game would probably just knock him into a coma before he got within forty miles of the place. Even if he wanted to see Stanford, there was just no way he could handle it.

“I’m sorry, Devon, I think I’m going to have to pass on that.” He gave Devon a regretful smile. “I never know what my schedule’s going to be, and you know how it is with us…”

“Government types?” Devon clapped him on the shoulder. “No big deal, bro. The offer’s open if you do find your schedule clear, but if not, no sweat, right? Hey, what do you say, next week—you and me, guy’s night? We’ll catch up, grab a couple of beers, watch a sporting event of some type.”

Chuck opened his mouth to turn Devon down, but the idea actually sounded nice. Being in the bunker had restricted his social circle to pretty much nil. It could be good to start making friends again, to expand his horizons…and possibly lose everything when the government decided the Intersect was too valuable to just leave wandering around Los Angeles.

Chuck shoved that poisonous thought away before it could take hold and completely ruin his night. “You really are as awesome as your old nickname,” he told Devon.

“Old nickname?”

“Yeah, back when you and Ellie first started dating, Morgan and I used to call you Captain Awesome.”

“Hey, I like that.” Devon grinned and struck a superhero pose in the middle of the courtyard. “Captain Awesome. Heh.”

“And now, I can fully say there is nothing ironic about the name.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been a captain of Awesome before. Maybe a lieutenant, but…”

Chuck couldn’t help it; he laughed. “Well, Captain Awesome, so forth shall you be called. So mote it be.”

“So mote it be,” Awesome echoed. “Oh, hey, new crowd incoming. If you’ll excuse me? I have to go take up my host duties.”

“One would expect nothing less from a Captain Awesome. Thanks for the invite to the game—I’ll catch up with you later.”

Once Awesome left him to go be a good host, the party seemed to increase in size, population, and volume. Chuck clutched his beer like a lifeline and hoped he wasn’t sweating too obviously. He probably shone like a wet human beacon, given that he could feel his heart beginning to beat erratically. Thankfully, his vision hadn’t started sparkling around the edges, so he had awhile to go before he had to take Sarah up on the offer of hiding in her room. Between the failed therapy session, the crowds at the pier, facing down a crazed gunman (water gun or no), shooting Sarah, and defusing a bomb, he was frankly a little amazed that he wasn’t gibbering in some corner somewhere.

Maybe Sarah was right. Maybe he was getting better.

Hoping to distract himself from a panic attack, he glanced about for Morgan. It usually wasn’t hard to find his best friend. All he had to do was check the food table—especially if Ellie had done the cooking. Chuck wandered over that way now. Realistically, if he were going to survive, liquid lubrication would be necessary. And he should probably cushion that alcohol with food to avoid embarrassing scenes. He grabbed another beer from the drinks table.

Though it warred with his instincts—find some place dark, cool, empty, and quiet—he headed toward the DJ booth. He’d have a better vantage point there to seek out his friend, and people might be dissuaded from talking to him by the volume of the music.

As he walked by the DJ table, studying the group around the fountain, something grabbed his arm. Chuck yelped and barely avoided spilling beer everywhere.

“Whoa, whoa—just me, buddy!” Morgan lowered a massive pair of earphones and gave Chuck a concerned look. “Man, hiding from the Mafia really did a number on you, didn’t it? You okay?”

Chuck thumped his chest to stabilize his heartbeat. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just startled.”

“Worried the ghouls’re gonna get you?” Morgan elbowed him, grinning. “Don’t blame you. Though I did see some very sexy ghosts wandering around, if you know what I mean. Wouldn’t mind one of them getting me.”

Chuck managed to infuse real humor into his chuckle. Belatedly, Chuck took in the full ensemble—the table, the speaker, laptop, a set of turntables, a banner bearing a cartoon of lightsaber-wielding Luke Skywalker pimping earphones and aviators. 

“Wow, Morgan,” Chuck said, taking in the pinstriped black shirt and vest. “DJ Starr Killer, huh?”

“In the flesh.” Morgan did an impromptu twirl—and promptly had to twirl back around to avoid strangling himself with his headphones cord. He grinned. “Ellie pays me to do all of her parties. She has to approve the playlist first, of course.”

“Of course. How much is she paying you for this, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Morgan waved that away. “Secrets between friends? Never.”

Chuck felt guilt slide a nice little dagger between his ribs.

“Ellie pays me by not filling out the restraining order. And two cases of grape soda.” Morgan held up a finger and turned back to his DJ equipment. He began spinning the turntables until the Gorillaz had blended smoothly into Motley Crue. Finished, he turned back to Chuck. “Ready to bring the sandworm back?”

“After five years of hibernation, I’d say the Worm who is God is once again ready to rule.” Chuck felt the first surge of excitement he’d experienced all day. As one, he and Morgan turned to face the costume, which lay behind the table on a pristine tarp. Chuck set the food and beer aside. “Can you believe it’s been fifteen years?”

“Eighth grade. We were so cool.”

Still are, I think.”

“Oh yeah.”

After a moment of proper reverence, Morgan started to move for the tail of the sandworm. Chuck grabbed his shoulder. “I think you should take the head this year.”

“What? No, Chuck, that’s your—”

“You more than deserve it, buddy. Look at how perfect you’ve kept her. I mean, wow. You can’t even see any evidence of the time you dared me to eat those fifty Warhead candies, and I puked so hard that Ellie decided on the spot that she was going to be a doctor.”

“A dark chapter in our history. And it was gastroenterologist, not doctor. Ellie’s always wanted to be a doctor.” Adoration gleamed as Morgan picked up the head of the sandworm. “Are you sure, Chuck?”

“I’m sure.”

“Then let the Shai-Hulud rise again!”

Together, they lifted the sandworm. At that moment, Chuck saw Ellie emerge from her apartment, glance around the courtyard, and spot him. She met his eye, took in the joint costume, and sighed good-naturedly. Chuck gave her a “what can you do?” shrug before he lowered the costume over his upper body.

Morgan counted to three and they charged out into the courtyard, right into the middle of the crowd. Operating a sandworm costume turned out to be just like riding a bicycle. They may have run over a few people at first, but before long, the entire crowd was chanting, “Sandworm! Sandworm! Sandworm!” and cheering them on.

The best part, Chuck felt, was that the voice leading the chant was Ellie’s.

**31 OCTOBER 2007**   
_**CHEZ** _ **BARTOWSKI/WALKER**   
**21:09 PDT**

Morgan and Chuck had discovered in the tenth grade that more than thirty minutes inside the sandworm led to bad things. Things like the cream cheese incident, wandering into walls, doors, other people, and, on one notable occasion, into the fountain. Morgan had been all for installing a timer and periscope system. Chuck had made the argument that they could just use their watches and use the money they saved from a lack of periscopes on video games. His argument had won, but only just. Periscopes were almost hard to resist for Morgan Grimes.

It was during a break that Chuck spotted Casey entering the courtyard. As was his habit, he moved to the right of the entryway, staying still while he scanned the area. When he saw Chuck, sitting with Ellie and Awesome and their friends, he shouldered his way through the crowd.

Chuck excused himself. “Casey, hey! I didn’t think you were going to make it.” 

“I’m not staying.” Casey glanced around and tugged at the lapel of his suit.

“Why not? Hot date?”

“No. I just dropped by to deliver this.” Casey produced an envelope from inside his suit and held it out.

As Chuck took the envelope, Awesome freed himself from the conversation by the fountain and wandered over to play host. “Hey,” he said to Casey. “How goes it? I’m Devon.”

“Oh, my bad. Devon, this is John Casey. He runs security for my company. Casey, Devon Woodcomb. He’s, uh, dating my sister.”

The two men shook hands. Devon grinned; Casey looked as solemn as ever. “So what are you supposed to be?” Devon asked, eyeing Casey’s suit. “Um, secret agent?”

Chuck, whose ears were now finely tuned to the silent (and deadliest) Casey growls, stepped forward so that he was shielding Awesome from Casey’s wrath. “Ha, ha,” he said, hoping his voice sounded squeaky only in his ears. “Good one, Devon. No, I don’t think Casey believes in Halloween. Got a hot date, don’t you, big guy?”

Casey’s growl could be heard only by small animals and Chuck.

“Awesome,” Awesome told Casey sincerely. “She must be one lucky lady.”

Chuck cleared his throat. “Wow, so, anyway—Casey, can I, ah, get you anything? There’s some excellent punch. I don’t think Morgan’s actually spiked it with peppermint schnaps this year, so it might still taste good. Why don’t I get you a cup?”

“Don’t worry about it, Bar—Chuck.” Casey’s eyes darted through all of the civilians. “I just wanted to drop that off for you on my way…to my date.”

Chuck thumbed open the envelope and reached inside, frowning a bit when his fingers found something flat, cool, about half an inch thick. It felt like a piece of wood. Curious, he pulled out a wooden plaque. The light from a nearby tikki torch made it easy to read. He leveled a stare at Casey. “Really? You came out of your way to bring me this?”

Casey snickered. “Good night, Bartowski. See you at home.”

As he sauntered away, Awesome gave Chuck a confused look. “He’s also my roommate,” Chuck explained, and sighed at the plaque. “And this is his idea of a joke.”

In his hand, he held a plaque proclaiming him the Employee of the Month for Pacific Securities, LLC for October of 2007. He glared at Casey’s retreating back.

“Oh, cool!” Morgan appeared at Chuck’s elbow to read the plaque. “Congratulations, Chuck!”

“It’s not real,” Chuck said. “It’s Casey’s idea of a joke.”

“Weird joke.”

“No kidding.” Awesome clapped Chuck on the shoulder as he sidled off.

“I think I’ll burn this,” Chuck said, studying the plaque.

Morgan had apparently stopped paying attention. “Wait a second,” he said to himself, though Chuck heard him perfectly. “Who is _that_ goddess? I don’t think I’ve seen her at any of Ellie’s parties before!”

“I know,” Chuck said without looking up from the plaque. “It’s ridiculous how many good looking doctors Ellie and Awesome know, isn’t it?”

“Uh, Chuck. I don’t think she’s a friend of Ellie and Awesome. She’s waving at you.” Morgan tugged on Chuck’s arm.

“What are you talking about? I don’t know any—oh, that’s Sarah.” Spotting her across the courtyard, Chuck waved back.

“Wait, Sarah? Your secretary Sarah?”

“Office manager,” Chuck said. “She’s not a secretary. She’s an office manager.”

“Whatever, she’s coming this way.” Morgan hurriedly finger-combed his hair, checked to make sure his shirt was tucked in, and smoothed his eyebrows in one practiced move.

Chuck stared at him. “How often do you practice that in the mirror?”

“Shh.”

Sarah finished easing through the crowd, a glass of wine in hand. She had a smile in place; Chuck was surprised to see that it was one of the real variety rather than a cover smile. She went straight for Morgan. “You must be Morgan. Chuck’s told me so much about you. I’m Sarah.”

Looking vaguely like a small animal caught in the headlights, Morgan shook the hand Sarah held out. “Grimes,” he said in a fairly decent British accent. “Morgan Grimes.”

Chuck rolled his eyes good-naturedly. Then, and only then, did he get a full look. A tan pencil skirt, a pale blue turtleneck, and a vest the same color as the skirt, trimmed with fur. Instead of the detached and professional look she preferred, she’d opted for dramatic makeup that accented her bone structure and made her seem more striking that usual. Her hair frame her face in a ‘60s bob. Chuck squinted—the ensemble looked familiar, but he couldn’t place it. “Who’re you supposed to be?”

Sarah actually pouted. “You don’t recognize it?”

“Dude, Chuck. _Duh_. Okay, man? Duh.” Morgan elbowed his friend and turned toward Sarah, his manner suddenly debonair. “Miss Romanova, I presume?”

She inclined her head, smiling. “You presume correctly.”

Chuck frowned as a memory flitted right at the edge of his mind, just out of reach. When it hit him, he all but groaned at himself.

“Tatiana Romanova?” he asked. “You’re Tania?”

Sarah gave him a very different smile than the one she’d bestowed upon Morgan. “I thought it was appropriate.”

“Well, yeah,” Morgan said, completely misinterpreting Sarah’s meaning. “You’re a dead ringer for Daniela Bianchi. Sarah, you may very well be the coolest woman on the planet, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I don’t mind.”

Chuck felt a grin blossom and grow until it threatened to split his face apart. “What happened to Miss ‘I still say I should be Bond,’ hmm?”

“The dry cleaners lost my tux, so I had to go with this old thing instead.” Sarah smoothed a hand over the faux fur on the vest. “Did I get it right? I, um, picked the movie because it was one I’d actually heard of. Did you know there are something like five different James Bonds?”

“Seven, actually,” Morgan said. “Eight if you count Peter Sellers—”

“Which we don’t.”

“But by far, the best Bond will always be Connery.”

“Bond, James Bond,” Chuck croaked in a fair imitation. Before Morgan could reply and send them both into a spiel of Bond quotes that could (and had) last for hours, he cleared his throat. “Uh, DJ Starr Killer? Your music stopped.”

“What? Oh, crap.” Morgan bolted to his feet and hurried away.

With him gone, Chuck chose to sit on one of the lawn chairs Ellie had dragged out for the occasion. Sarah perched on the arm of the chair. They were silent for a moment, watching the party all around them as Morgan set up Nelly on the speakers. 

Chuck broke the silence. “So, ‘From Russia With Love,’ huh? Is that some kind of message?”

Sarah took a sip of wine and shrugged. “Not really. Do you remember how many hours we were on the Siberian Express?”

“Uh, vaguely. Why?” 

“Because you let maybe two of them go by without quoting that movie. I got curious, so I rented it.”

“And what did you think?”

For a long moment, he wasn’t sure if Sarah was going to answer or not. “It really, really sucked.”

Shock made Chuck give her a scandalized look. “Bite your tongue! That’s James Bond you’re blaspheming!”

Sarah just took another drink of wine and shook her head, as if mystified. “Well, maybe you saw something I didn’t.” She sounded doubtful. 

“So if you thought the movie sucked, why are you Tatiana?” Chuck said, folding his arms over his chest and giving her his best sarcastic look.

“What, and miss the way your eyes all but popped out of your head? C’mon, Chuck. Even I’m not a big enough person to rise above that.” Sarah fluffed her hair—admittedly, longer than Tatiana Romanova’s, but Chuck couldn’t blame her for not wanting to get her hair cut for a Halloween costume. “Besides, it’s nice to have a creative costume. I wear disguises for work all the time, but on my own, I usually just go as a cat or something. The opportunity was just too perfect.”

Chuck just shook his head, slowly, but he was smiling again. “Just think, Sarah Walker. You came so close to being the perfect woman. But I don’t know if we’re going to get past this Bond hatred of yours.”

“We’ll work on it.” Sarah smiled. “What on earth are you holding?”

“Casey’s idea of a joke.” Chuck handed over the plaque that he’d all but forgotten about. “Congratulate me, I’m Castle’s Employee of the Month.”

“Hm. Guess he still hasn’t figured out you hid all of the weapons in the armory last night.”

“If I’m lucky, he never will.” Chuck rolled his eyes again. “Even if it saved our lives. May he never figure out why Laszlo only had a water gun.”

“So…why are _you_ Employee of the Month? I missed something.” 

“Don’t worry—if you shoot me with a tranq dart at any point in time, I’m sure Casey will be glad to bequeath that questionable honor to you, too. I bet he’d even be okay with you using regular bullets.”

He expected fury, or at the very least, mild annoyance. But the corners of Sarah’s mouth tilted upward as she studied the plaque. “Nice to know he has a sense of humor, even if it’s at my expense. You should put this over your desk at work.”

“I’d rather not have the reminder of my actions from today sitting over my head all day. Sarah, I’m—”

“If you apologize again, it’s going to be thirteen times,” Sarah said, her voice deceptively pleasant. “And I’m told that’s unlucky. We’ve been over this.”

“All right, all right.” Chuck took the plaque back as Morgan came hurrying back up.

“Got the music situation all taken care of, so DJ Starr Killer is free to focus all of his attention on you two.” He plopped down on the lip of the fountain opposite of them and gave Sarah his biggest grin. “So. What’d I miss?”

Chuck and Sarah exchanged a glance, one silently amused, the other not so much. “Ah,” Chuck said, ignoring Sarah’s quiet smile, “honestly, you probably don’t want to know.”


	18. You Can Only Run So Far

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s [expletive deleted]. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain. — _Jim Morrison_

**9 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: SHOOTING RANGE**   
**13:42 PST**

“Rule number one,” Casey said, his voice terse, “when we are in this room, your weapon, be it a tranq gun, a handgun, or an assault rifle, is pointed in that direction.” He pointed at the wall to his left, where two targets—silhouettes, Chuck corrected. They were called silhouettes—were already set up. Neither silhouette had any holes in it. Chuck imagined that would quickly change with at least one of the silhouettes…Casey’s. 

“Rule number two—”

“Don’t let my finger rest on the trigger unless I am actually squeezing said trigger,” Chuck said.

The NSA agent glared. “And what was rule number three?”

“Don’t interrupt you when you’re talking.”

Casey folded his arms over his chest.

“Which is what I was doing,” Chuck said. “I’m sorry. Please continue.”

“When you are in this room, you are always to assume that a weapon is loaded unless you have personally just checked the chamber. There will be absolutely no goofing off. And all orders are to be obeyed without question. Is that understood?”

“Crystal clear,” Chuck said, adding a half-salute.

“Don’t do that again. Ever.”

“Yes, uh, sir.”

Casey picked up a handgun from the small shelf that sat about waist height. The range had two booths, each with the shelf and a shooting window above it, with switches on either wall that would bring the silhouette nearer or farer, set a timer, or even adjust the lighting to fit different scenarios. Chuck ignored all of this to focus on what Casey held.

It was a Sig Sauer P229, Casey’s gun of choice, as it was issued to quite a few government agents. Sarah preferred a sleeker Smith & Wesson that Chuck called the Silver Monster (never within her hearing, though), but why she liked it over the Sig, he didn’t know. Maybe he’d ask after he went to the emergency room later for accidentally shooting himself in the foot.

“We’ve worked with this gun. You know how to clean it. You know how to field strip it. How to load it, unload it, and work the safety. You’ve satisfactorily passed the exam naming all of the different parts.” Casey’s dubious tone told Chuck the other man clearly thought he could have done better, though Chuck had aced that test, save for one typo. “Which is why, today, you’ll finally get a chance to fire it.”

He extended the gun, hilt first. Chuck furtively wiped his palm on his slacks before he took the gun. As always, it felt surprisingly heavy. He didn’t know if it was his imagination or not.

“Face the silhouette,” Casey ordered. The next few minutes were spent adjusting Chuck’s stance and grip. When Casey was satisfied, Chuck pulled on ear protectors. “I’m going to let you shoot, just to get a feel for it. Remember what I taught you.”

Casey could put drill sergeants to shame. Chuck figured he probably wouldn’t ever forget the gun maintenance and shooting lessons, even if he wanted to.

When Casey gave him the okay, Chuck took a deep breath, set his stance, and squinted at the silhouette. It was just a circle; Casey had probably avoided using a person-shaped target on purpose. His finger shook as he slid it onto the trigger.

The first shot startled him. He flinched as the gun kicked back, the recoil shaking his arms all the way to the shoulders. The shot itself went wide, hitting just inside of the circle’s edge. Dazed that he’d hit anything at all, Chuck lowered the gun and removed his finger from the trigger. 

“Adjust your grip,” Casey said. “See if you can’t get closer to the middle. Try a couple of shots in a row.”

Chuck did as ordered. This time, the kickback didn’t surprise him as badly as he was prepared for it. He fired off three shots in semi-quick succession, trying not to wince.

“Not bad,” Casey said, motioning for Chuck to flip the safety and set the gun down. He flipped the switch to bring the silhouette closer. “You’re flinching, but that’s to be expected. It may go away with practice, it may not. But don’t worry—a lot of experienced gunmen flinch. They just learn to compensate for it. The fact that you grouped these three shots together actually shows a lot of promise.”

Chuck stared at him. “C-Casey? Did you just compliment me?”

“Shut up, moron.”

“Yeah, I must’ve been hallucinating, you’re right.”

“You’re not completely incompetent,” Casey said, studying the silhouette. “Now that you’re familiar with the gun and how it shoots, I want you to try aiming, looking down the barrel sight like I showed you and—what is it, Walker?”

Both men looked over to where Sarah stood outside the room, by the intercom. “Teleconference, five minutes,” she said, and hurried away to strip out of her exercise gear. Chuck exchanged a glance with Casey before they pulled off their goggles, stowing everything neatly in assigned slots by the door. Casey took the spare Sig Sauer with him, ordering Chuck to wait in front of the briefing screens.

Chuck tucked his hands in his pockets, scowling. He hated briefings, as they always spelled trouble for somebody on the team. Unfortunately, it was usually him, as Sarah and Casey had exemplary service records, whereas he only had a bunker, a few hostage situations, and a defused bomb to his name.

Casey joined him first, Sarah sprinting up at the last second, pulling her wet hair back into a ponytail as she ran. Chuck put a hand out to prevent her from sliding into the table; she grinned up at him before turning a somber expression to the screens.

All three screens clicked on. Chuck wondered why Director Graham always leaned over General Beckman—didn’t that get uncomfortable? Why couldn’t he just use a chair like the rest of civilization?

Graham nodded at each of them in turn. “I trust we aren’t interrupting anything important?”

“No sir.” Sarah had her company smile on. “In fact, Casey was helping Agent Bartowski pass his firearms certification.”

“Excellent. I suppose we’ll dive right in?” General Beckman phrased the question in a way that it became an order. Chuck had to admire her for it. “We received a distress signal from a George Fleming, code name Glass—”

“Professor Fleming?” Chuck asked, praying that he had misheard. “George Fleming?”

“Yes, Agent Bartowski.”

Chuck’s hands tightened into fists. 

Sarah glanced between him and the screen, just a flicker of her eyes. “If I may, what exactly is the nature of Fleming’s relationship with Agent Bartowski?”

“He recruited me.” Chuck kept his voice even, his expression blank. He felt something sick, oily, and black begin to grow through his middle, poison eating him slowly from the inside out. He focused his eyes on a fixed point—over General Beckman’s shoulder. “I took his Psychology and Symbolism class, back at Stanford. What happened to him?”

“We received a distress signal, but we are uncertain as to the actual situation. Here.” General Beckman pushed a button and audio began to roll. Chuck slammed a lid down on his emotions so that he could listen to the message calmly, objectively. Without wanting to take the gun Casey had been teaching him how to use and to start shooting random things.

“This is Glass Castle reporting hostile contact. I made a mistake, Black Coat. I copied intel for myself onto a disk. They’re after it. I knew I shouldn’t have—” 

Something on the audio slammed.

“General, when was this received?”

“Two days ago, but it was not brought to our attention until some…” Director Graham rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath. “Idiot down in the Comm Office realized that the Black Coat he referred to was Bryce Larkin’s old code name, which gives Prometheus jurisdiction.”

Now it was Sarah’s turn to tense. “Director? I partnered with Larkin, and I don’t recall—”

“It was his Stanford name,” Chuck said. “Professor Fleming had names for all of us. Code names.”

His fists tightened all over again.

“A local office pulled the video from around Professor Fleming’s classroom and were able to ascertain that this man was the hostile contact Fleming reported.” A mug-shot of a bald, angry man ate up half of the screen, a small line of text naming him Magnus Ragnhildur. “Professor Fleming is a company scientist, not a field agent, and we believe he may have contacts in the LA area. Your job is to find him, extract him, and retrieve the location of the intel before Ragn—Ragunhi—Magnus can. You will use Agent Bartowski’s connection in order to extract the asset—Dr. Fleming—safely.”

It took a herculean effort for Chuck to keep his face blank. Inside, the blackness oozed another inch. He could feel it squeezing his lungs.

Sarah stepped forward, placing herself between Chuck and the screens. “General, Director, perhaps Major Casey and I can handle this on our own?”

Chuck glanced over, surprised. On screen, the two officials did the same. “Why do you ask, Agent Walker?” Graham asked.

Sarah paused. She’d always taken the demure approach to briefings, giving her reports concisely and asking questions only when necessary. Chuck could see lines of tension screaming through her shoulders now, but she didn’t back down. “Permission to speak freely?”

“I don’t think that’s—”

“Granted,” Beckman said, cutting Graham off. “Go on, Walker.”

“Agent Bartowski has willingly given up a lot to serve his country, but while he continues to have an excellent record, contact with the man who recruited him and therefore led to Agent Bartowski’s time in the bunker might be…unwise. I feel like it’s better we don’t delve into, ah, Agent Bartowski’s past relationships.”

“And why do you feel that way?”

Casey and Sarah exchanged a glance. Chuck waited, as curious as the people onscreen. Had Casey and Sarah been discussing him? It was likely—after all, what did they have to talk about whenever they left him in the car? He doubted Sarah bothered with the FOX News Network. He wasn’t sure how he felt about being a topic of conversation, though.

“The Intersect functions best when Chu—Agent Bartowski’s emotions are in balance. As lead CIA operative on the Prometheus team, it is my opinion that exposing Agent Bartowski to Fleming at this stage in the game would be deleterious to his mental state, especially as it’s unnecessary. Major Casey and I can handle any problems.” Sarah kept her hands behind her back and her eyes forward. “Given the results the team has produced in less than a month, our record speaks for itself.”

General Beckman was frowning, but Chuck had hardly ever seen her do otherwise. “Your record reads like a comic book, so I’d hardly brag about that, Agent Walker.”

“General, if I may, I believe Walker may be right.” Casey kept his thumb tucked in his waistband, hand gripping his other wrist. “If this Fleming relies as much upon code names, giving him Bartowski’s code name will be sufficient.”

“And if not?”

Casey’s shrug said what his personality never missed the opportunity to say: I’ll shoot him.

Beckman and Graham exchanged a look. Graham gave in first. “Fine. Agent Walker, Major Casey, bring Fleming in. Alive. Preferably unharmed. Agent Bartowski, remain inside Castle until your teammates have returned.”

Chuck, not sure if he could speak, just nodded.

“Report in once you have secured the asset,” Beckman ordered, and the screen cut off.

The instant they were alone, Chuck felt his shoulders sag. He dropped his gaze to the floor, not wanting to meet Sarah or Casey’s eye. He could feel cracks splintering throughout the lid he’d slammed over all of the ugliness, building up pressure behind his sternum and threatening to explode. Without saying a word, he simply turned and left the room.

“I’ll get the gear,” he heard Casey say. Sarah murmured something to acknowledge it; a few seconds later, Chuck the slap of her bare feet on the tiles. He wandered blindly, not even caring when he ended up in the dojo, with Sarah trailing him. When he finally stopped and just stared at the wall, trying to contain everything, she touched him hesitantly, just above the elbow. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

Chuck shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Sarah said nothing.

Women, Chuck had always figured, took some secret class somewhere between birth and the age of three, a class that taught them the most effective use of silence. Ellie had always been able to frost him out without a single word or comfort him with nothing more than a hug. Sarah’s expressions could write novels. He knew had a marginally better chance of keeping the sickness and poison inside, instead of letting them spew out all over her and everything he knew, if he didn’t meet her eye. 

So he turned and stared hard at Frank, and deliberately tried not to think. If he thought about anything, anything at all, the anger and helplessness making his hands spasm would rise up and swallow him whole.

“Chuck?” Sarah ventured when Chuck sucked in a deep breath.

He pushed the blackness back by sheer force of will. “Yeah?” Amazingly, his voice sounded completely normal.

“I wish you’d talk to me.”

“Worried about me?” He attempted self-deprecating. See how normal Chuck can be, he wanted to say. See what a screw-up he isn’t?

Sarah moved into his line of sight and met his gaze. “Yes.”

“Why? Poor, broken Chuck, can’t even handle the thought of his recruiter?” He gave a hollow laugh. It came out slightly hysterical.

“You’re not broken.”

“Oh, give me a break, Sarah. I’m a spy failure. I’m so bad that instead of sending me home like the other spy failures, they dumped me in a bunker and forgot about me. The only value I provide right now is a damned computer in my skull, and even that wasn’t up to me. No, Bryce Larkin did that.”

“You’re not broken,” Sarah repeated, her voice absolutely calm. Her eyes dared him to look away, but he knew she’d just step into his line of sight again. “I don’t know where you’re getting this idea that you are—”

“Oh yeah? Why else would they throw me in a bunker, then?”

Sarah opened her mouth to say something, but Casey rapped hard on the dojo door frame, drawing their attention over to him. He had a backpack over one shoulder and held a second, which he tossed to Sarah. Shoes followed. “Ours is not to question why, Bartowski. Ready to go, Walker?”

“Just one moment.”

“Guess I’ll warm up the car.” Casey rolled his eyes, but left them without comment. In some distant corner of his mind that wasn’t drowning in despair, Chuck couldn’t help but be grateful. He wasn’t sure he could handle a sardonic Casey, much less a sarcastic one.

Sarah changed the touch on his arm to a grip. “Chuck, listen to me,” she said, stepping closer. “You’re not a failure, and you’re not a screw-up. You may think you’re worthless, but you’re not. You’re one of the strongest people I know. They stuck you in a godforsaken bunker for three years and they left you there, and despite all of that, despite everything they’ve heaped on you, you still get out of bed every morning, you still come into work, and you still do things like defuse bombs and stop Triad gangs, even if Casey and I wish you would just stay in the damn car. That is not the sign of any failure, screw-up, whatever pissant label you want to throw on it, so just shut up. Got it?”

“Five years,” Chuck said when he found his voice.

Sarah blinked and took a step back. “What?”

“Five years, they had me in the bunker five years.” Chuck turned, slightly. Sarah didn’t talk much as a rule, but when she did, the woman could pack a verbal punch. “I guess it doesn’t matter, as what’s done is done, but what really gets me is that I wasn’t supposed to take Fleming’s class. I was a last minute addition because the other psychology course I wanted to take was full. And like the good little student I was, I aced the thing. Now look at me.”

He sagged back against the wall, his energy sapped. “Either way, I guess I should thank you,” he said in a tired voice.

“For what?” Sarah stooped to pull on her shoes.

“For standing up for me, to the general and the director. You didn’t have to do that. I would’ve manned up eventually.”

Sarah pulled her gun out of the bag’s front pocket and checked the chamber before she holstered it in her waistband. “Stop being so hard on yourself. You’re a member of my team, and you’re a member of Casey’s team. If that means going to the wall for you, so be it. To the wall, then.”

“Well, still. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Feet shod, gun holstered, and bearing the backpack, Sarah straightened. She touched Chuck’s shoulder, gently, so that he met her gaze. “Now, I have to go, but will you be okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” It was a lie, but Sarah Walker had a world to save, and she didn’t need Chuck Bartowski holding her back. So he gave her a smile he didn’t feel. “Go on, save Fleming. Feel free to rough him up. I only got an A minus on my final exam.”

“Will do.” Sarah gave him a real smile, brushed her hand over his shoulder, and turned to leave. She paused by the door. “Oh, right. What was your code name, so that we can prove to Fleming we know you?”

Chuck shrugged. “White hat.”

The last thing he expected was for Sarah’s grin to flash, but it did. “Appropriate,” she said, and vanished around the corner.

The instant Chuck saw the door close behind her, he rose to his full height. The sickening anger swelled up so fast and hard that his hands began to shake all over again. Why had he taken that damned class? Why had fate maneuvered him away from the class he’d wanted to take, and into the CIA, where they’d thrown him away to rot?

He couldn’t think about this. Refused to think about this. Down this path, there was only fury, an unstoppable tidal wave of it, all that rage and raw despair with nowhere to _go_. It could knock him flat, it would hollow him and leave nothing but an empty carapace. A shell that Sarah would have to clean up, just one more thing she would have to do for Chuck the Pathetic Failure of a Spy.

 _You’re not a failure_.

Yeah, right, Chuck thought. Sarah could coddle and reassure until blue in the face, but it wouldn’t change a thing. He was a failure, and he wasn’t supposed to be here. Casey should be in DC, Sarah in Beirut or some place equally sinister—two more lives ruined by Chuck’s time in Fleming’s class. Just like, had Chuck not disappeared, Ellie would still be the trusting and open woman he loved, probably married to Awesome and having awesome babies, and Morgan wouldn’t have a shrine to a missing best friend in an electronics superstore.

And what would he be doing? Chuck rarely let himself think about it, but now it seeped through the Swiss cheese that had been his defenses. Would he be where he’d hoped? Semi-retired, successful software firm owner? Maybe he’d be married. To Jill? Or maybe she would have dumped him either way and he’d still be a bachelor, waiting for Ms. Right to come along. Maybe he had already found Ms. Right.

One thing was for certain: he sure as hell wouldn’t need a shower every time he went into a large room, he wouldn’t have to tuck himself into a corner at night to get any sleep, and he wouldn’t spend his evenings eating Chinese food in his car, too petrified to approach the woman who broke his heart.

His movements eerily calm, Chuck turned and studied Frank. His hands didn’t shake as he undid his shirt cuffs and buttons, peeling the garment off and folding it neatly over the back of a chair. He ignored the two sets of gloves set off to the side—he didn’t want to use Sarah’s, and Casey would murder him, Intersect or no—and drove his fist into Frank’s brutish face.

It hurt. It hurt a whole hell of a lot, actually. 

He did the same thing with the other fist. It hurt even more.

Good. Pain forced his consciousness into a single point. It widened the gap between him and that darkness making him want to scream. With every fist he drove into Frank’s torso, he felt something release just a little bit inside him. He hit harder, grunting, puffing when that wasn’t enough, gasping when even that couldn’t do it. He wanted to destroy, he wanted the cathartic, cleansing burn that would make everything just _go away_. 

He continued to pummel onward and outward to a tempo only something deep inside him understood. Harder. Faster. Each strike breaking through the cloud until there was nothing left.

Nothing left but Chuck Bartowski, spy failure. 

His hands throbbing, Chuck sank to the floor, resting his spine against Frank’s mount. He stared at the mirror opposite, at the reflection of a skinny, sweating man with disheveled hair and bloody hands.

In the silent dojo, away from the thrum and hum of everyday life, his breath rasped even louder than usual.

**9 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: UPSTAIRS**   
**18:12 PST**

He knew Casey and Sarah would take Fleming to a safe-house, which meant they’d be coming back alone—or rather, one would come back while the other waited to transfer Fleming into custody of the CIA. When the front door opened, Chuck glanced up, surprised to hear two sets of footsteps. Sarah came in first. Casey followed.

Immediately, Chuck swiveled a monitor aside to get a better look. “Uh, Casey?”

“What?” Casey said between his teeth.

“Are you limping?”

Casey glared. Why on earth that would make Sarah suppress one of her lightning quick smiles, Chuck didn’t know. “No,” the NSA agent grunted. Swinging the Scooby door open, he disappeared downstairs.

Chuck glanced over at Sarah. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. Any problems while we were gone?”

“Nothing I couldn’t call in a local task force for.” Chuck nodded at the reports he’d shipped off to local ATF and FBI units. He kept his hands in his lap and watched her strip out of her jacket and toss it on the guest chair. As he didn’t really have guests, the chair had become Sarah’s when she wanted to avoid her desk and all the paperwork. She collapsed into it and immediately yanked the leg of her jeans up, pulling off her knife holster.

Chuck cleared his throat. “Professor Fleming get to the safe-house all right?”

“No.” Sarah pulled her gun out, shoving it and the knives in her backpack. She seemed annoyed. “He’s in the emergency room.”

“Wh-what?”

“Magnus startled us before we could get the location of the intel, and Fleming’s not exactly in any condition to talk. He won’t be for hours, if he makes it at all.” Sarah looked troubled. “Chuck, would he have written it down anywhere? The location?”

Though it made him nervous to give Fleming any thought, given the severity of his earlier attack, Chuck forced himself to remember all of the interactions he’d had with the psychology professor. He’d made the spy life seem glamorous and fulfilling, and his group of Stanford spies had probably had a much different recruitment process than other schools.

“He probably did,” Chuck said. “After all, he copied the intel onto a disk for himself, and didn’t destroy it before word could get out.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Sarah rubbed her hands over her face. “Magnus searched the place. We think Fleming’s briefcase is gone. We’ve got a team looking over everything, but we had to get Fleming and Casey to the hospital—” 

“What!” Chuck jolted to his feet.

“Casey’s fine. No need to worry.”

“Why did he need to go to the hospital? Was that why—was that why he was limping?”

Sarah didn’t answer. Her instead gaze cut straight to the slipshod bandages covering his knuckles. This time, her silence was a question.

Chuck stuffed his aching hands into his pockets, but the damage was done. “I got mad at Frank.”

“What?”

“After you and Casey left, I wanted to hit things, so…I hit Frank.” Chuck sat down and leaned back, away from danger, as Sarah rounded the desk. “It’s no big deal, I already bandaged it all up and I used Neosporin, so I doubt anything will scar—”

“Let me see.” Sarah sat on the edge of his desk, intentionally invading his space so that he had nowhere to look but at her. Grudgingly, he took his hands out of his pockets and offered them. She kept her voice cool as she began to peel the bandages away, but he could see the way her eyes cut toward him often. “You were angry?”

“It’s a pretty common human emotion. I’m not a robot.”

“Nobody ever said you were. That’s all that happened, though? You were mad, and you hit Frank?”

“A bunch of times,” Chuck admitted. “It was a pity party. I feel better now.”

Sarah let out a breath as the final bit of cloth fell away, revealing the full damage. Chuck knew it wasn’t the prettiest sight. The knuckles had swelled to twice their size, and cuts and cracks ran throughout, some edged with dried blood. Sarah didn’t even flinch. “And you’re sure that’s all that happened?” she asked as she prodded each knuckle.

“Ow—ooh—yeah, that’s all that happened. Frank and I, we’re going through a rough patch now, but we’ll—ow! Quit that!”

“Nothing broken,” Sarah confirmed. “You’ll just be sore, and I guarantee you, you’ll regret it tomorrow. I’m going to get you some ice.”

Chuck blinked at her as she rose. “You’re not mad that I hurt myself? Usually when I do something stupid, you get pissed.”

She paused with her back to him; he had no idea what her expression might be, but her voice sounded completely calm as she said, “No, Chuck, I’m not mad. Not at you. Why don’t you log off? You probably shouldn’t be typing with your hands like that.”

“Guess that means no video games, too,” Chuck muttered as Sarah headed downstairs for the icepacks. He followed, since he was done for the day anyway. “So you think this Magnus guy has the location? Well, if he does, you’ve probably got time to wait for Fleming to wake up. The guy was nuts about codes. He used to send us all of our messages in code, which could be a real pain, let me tell—wait a second.”

He stopped halfway down the stairs.

“Chuck?” Sarah, sensing something, turned. “What is it?”

“Why would Fleming contact _Bryce_? Why Bryce specifically? Wasn’t he just an ex-student?”

Casey stood at the conference table, going through manila folders. “Chances are, Bryce became Fleming’s main CIA contact,” he said, shrugging as the other two joined him. “He was probably never told Larkin was rogue.”

“And there’s no way Bryce could have intercepted the message?” 

Sarah and Casey exchanged a glance. “It’s unlikely,” Sarah said. “Why?”

“Fleming insisted every single one of us ‘Stanford spies’ have was a stash, somewhere we could leave essential items if we ever needed, or a message for him. He knew where everybody kept theirs, even if all Bryce and I ever used ours for were to stash things like extra darts.” He remembered their dart gun wars in the library, and how it used to drive him nuts that Bryce would mysteriously come up with extra ammunition.

Casey rolled his eyes. “A dumpsite should be used for emergency items like cash—”

“We were scholarship students, Casey.” Chuck rolled his own eyes. “Bryce kept a dumpsite in the library on campus—I did, too, but mine was in the Auxiliary Library. If Fleming was going to leave something for Bryce, it’d be in Green Library.”

“Where?” Sarah asked.

“Uh, I don’t remember exactly. It’s in the South Stacks, you go to the third floor and you make the first left and…” Chuck trailed off. The visual map he carried of the “Scary Stacks” had evidently eroded, just one more screw-up on his part. He gave Sarah and Casey a helpless look. “I honestly think I’d have to be there. I’d have to…go back.”

Sarah looked wary. “Can you handle it?”

“Honestly? I don’t—” Chuck frowned as a thought took hold. “The big Stanford-UCLA game is tomorrow. It’ll be good cover, plenty of people wandering around campus.”

All those people, all that open air. Football.

But if Professor Fleming had intel important enough that a cold-faced killer like Magnus Ragnhildur was after it, Chuck’s phobias would just have to deal. With a shaking hand, he drew his phone out of his pocket. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Chuck, what are you—” 

Chuck had already dialed. “Ellie?” he asked once his sister had picked up. “You don’t happen to know if Awes—ah, Devon still has those game tickets for Sarah and me, do you? We got the day off, and I kind of want to show my office manager my alma mater. Oh, he does? That’s fantastic!”

He hung up a minute later. “Well, gang, we’re going to Stanford. I never thought I’d say this, but wear a red shirt.”


	19. Many Faces of Chuck and Sarah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving. — _Dale Carnegie_

**10 NOVEMBER 2007**   
_**CHEZ** _ **BARTOWSKI/WALKER**   
**10:47 PST**

An hour before they were supposed to have arrived at Stanford, Chuck knocked at the door of his sister’s apartment. He always felt just that little spurt of nervousness right under the ribcage. Maybe it was nerves that Ellie would have mysteriously vanished, or he was going to screw up something in front of her, or worse, Sarah. Either way, he felt it flood right now and let it pass.

Just in time, too. Ellie yanked open the door and pulled him for a quick hug. “You made it! How are your hands? Sarah told me what happened.”

Chuck squinted at her, uncertain. “Um, they’re fine.” He had no idea what cover story Sarah had made up about his hands being covered in bandages, so he fell back on a tired smile.

“Do you want me to look them over?”

“No, I cleaned ‘em pretty good. They’re okay.”

“Okay, then. I’m so, so sorry, if I’d known that consult would take this long, I would have had Dr. Markowicz take it, but it’s one of my bomb patients, and he’s not doing so well—”

Awesome appeared behind her, grinning in welcome at Chuck. “It’s no problem, babe. Don’t worry about it—so we missed a little tailgating.”

“And I really don’t mind,” Chuck said. The government did, he knew. Casey had been making growling noises under his breath for the past two hours as the others were forced to wait for Ellie to finish up an emergency page. He didn’t know how Sarah was reacting, as he hadn’t seen her. “Where’s, ah, Sarah?”

Something flickered through Ellie’s eyes. “She had to take a call. I’m sure she’ll be out any minute. Mind helping Devon grab the stuff? I’ve got to change.”

“What? Oh, sure. Not at all.”

“Right this way, bro.” Between the two of them, they hefted a cooler, juggling bags of food and a plate of nachos. Chuck was pretty sure he made feeble, half-hearted responses to Awesome’s good-natured jibes about how much Stanford sucked, but by the time they returned to the apartment for the second trip, he couldn’t remember a single thing said by either of them.

Awesome picked up on it. “You okay?”

“What? Oh. Yeah, I’m fine.” He wasn’t, he knew. He probably looked like a mess, as he’d gotten an hour of sleep the night before. Maybe. If he rounded up. He’d taken time with his appearance, for what it was worth. Not much he could do with his hair, and the uniform for the big game was just an old Stanford tee and jeans. Casey wouldn’t even let him have the tranq gun until they got to the library. “I think I’m gonna use the little boys’ room before we hit the road.”

“Go ahead, I’ve got the rest.” Awesome waved him off.

In the bathroom, finally closed off from the rest of the world, he turned on the faucet and just stood, watching the water gush for a moment. Now that he didn’t have people around to fool, it was possible to simply stop and stare and just let the numbness overwhelm. He couldn’t even work up a baseline excitement about returning to his alma mater. He should, he knew. He should be excited beyond words to return to the place where he’d spent four of the happiest years of his life. His last few moments of true happiness. 

Except what was waiting for him? Memories about Bryce? Pass. He had no idea what Bryce was up to—the “Where’s Bryce?” board had sat silent for weeks—or why he did anything these days. Memories about Jill? Yeah, he’d rather perform open heart surgery on himself without anesthesia, thank you very much. His frat brothers? They probably thought he was dead, and he all but was, for all the good it did him.

And now, on top of all of that, he was going to have to sit in a crowded stadium. For _hours_. All that open air, all those _people_ using up all of the damned oxygen and—

“Um, Chuck?”

Chuck whirled. His eyes traveled up, down, and finally froze just above center—before he remembered himself, yelped again, and slapped his hands over them. “Holy—”

“Shh! Or do you want your sister and Devon to know you’re in here with me?”

“I—ah—naked!” Chuck kept his hands clamped firmly over his face. It was a useless gesture. He knew that. There was no way in hell he would ever lose the image that had etched itself on his brain. And no reason he should, really, except that it was probably disrespectful. “Very, _very_ naked!”

He heard the baffled amusement in Sarah’s laugh, and rustling. She was probably reaching for a towel. Disappointment stabbed through him. “Well, what did you expect? I don’t usually shower with clothes on.”

“While that is an excellent point—”

“And you should probably have knocked. I mean, what if it had been Ellie in here?”

“Oh, God,” was all Chuck could say to that.

Something touched his arm—Chuck scrambled backward, hands still firmly glued to his face. He probably would have landed in the toilet if Sarah hadn’t grabbed both of his arms. “It’s okay, I’ve got a towel on. You can look.”

Cautiously, Chuck opened one eye, just a slit, and peeked through his fingers. She had indeed wrapped a towel around her torso. Chuck’s gaze cut immediately to the knot between her breasts. He flushed bright red and shut his eyes again. Now he had another image to add to a growing collection. 

Sarah Walker might just very well be trying to kill him. Knowing him, he’d be in the middle of defusing a bomb or trying to stop a madman, and he’d accidentally think about Sarah’s, um—well, Sarah’s _anything_ at all—and then, bam, the world would blow up. At least he’d die with a goofy smile on his face, Chuck thought sourly. Were you doomed to carry your final expression through the afterlife? Something to ponder later.

“Chuck?” Sarah asked.

Chuck, realizing that was just standing there with his hands over his eyes while his partner gripped his arms, forced himself to take a deep breath. He lowered his hands, keeping his gaze on her face. She looked good wet—stop that, Bartowski—save the worried frown. “Are you okay?” she asked him. “What were you doing?”

“What?”

Sarah reached over and turned off the tap without breaking her gaze. “You okay? You were staring at the sink.”

“Oh.” It all rushed back. Chuck straightened a little bit, sheepishly. “Sorry. I was, um, psyching myself up. About going back to Stanford.”

“Ah.” Sarah ran a hand over his shoulder and padded across the bathroom. Chuck watched her, confused, as she picked up the folded clothes from the edge of the tub. She turned and lifted an eyebrow. “You’re welcome to enjoy the show, but be warned, I’m about to dry off, which does involve nudity, yes.”

Chuck flushed bright red again, and all but spun on the spot before he could talk himself out of it.

“Talk to me,” Sarah ordered.

Chuck stared at the wall. “It’s not a big deal.”

“You think you’ll be able to handle the football game? It might be a little bit before we can sneak away to go check the library.”

Her voice was slightly muffled—it sounded like she might be toweling her hair. Chuck blinked and cleaned out his ear with his pinky finger. “Did you just say neck in the library?”

A snicker. “Well, why not? You’ve already seen me naked.”

Chuck made a noise that was somewhere between a yelp and a “meep.” 

“Glad to see I’m still incredibly terrifying.” Sarah didn’t sounded offended, merely amused. “You never answered my question.”

The need to answer had been buried under a surprisingly hot flash of imagination. Chuck took a moment to clear his head before thinking back. Because it was Sarah, he decided to be honest. “I’m a little nervous about it. It’s a lot of people.”

“I know.”

“What if I can’t hack it?” And if, he thought as desperation and despair began to creep in and latch beneath his sternum, not only could he _not_ hack it, but he had a major freak-out in front of thousands of other fans in the stands? In front of Sarah, in front of Ellie and Awesome and all of Awesome’s frat brothers?

“Then you let me know.” Sarah’s voice made it sound just that simple. “I’ll spill something on my shirt, take you with me, and we can go find someplace quiet for awhile until you feel better. Not a big deal, right?”

“One thing at a time,” Chuck said, his lips twisting up in a humorless smile. He nearly turned to share it with her, but remembered his blood pressure just in time. A thought sobered him. “Do you ever get tired of it?”

“Tired of what?”

“Being the level-headed, reassuring one all the damn time?” Chuck pushed both hands through his hair, scowling when they nearly got stuck. It was definitely time to shave his head again. “Doesn’t it get old?”

“Not really.” There was more rustling—this time it sounded like Sarah donning clothes rather than just toweling herself dry. More disappointment rose. Chuck fought it down to listen to Sarah. “Chuck, you haven’t even been out of that bunker for two months. Don’t you think you’re being just a bit unrealistic when it comes to your expectations?”

Chuck opened his mouth to reply, but knocking made him glance over sharply at the door. “Chuck?” Ellie’s voice. She sounded confused. “Are you in there? I thought I heard voices.”

“Wh-what?” Panic made Chuck’s voice soar up an octave. “No, no, I’m alone in here, Ellie, I promise. Just finishing up. Be out in a second!”

But that would never suffice to dislodge Ellie once she sank her metaphorical teeth into a bone. “I can’t find Sarah anywhere,” she said, her voice losing not one iota of suspicion. “She’s not…in there with you, is she?”

All of the blood drained from Chuck’s face. Had Ellie somehow developed X-ray vision in the time he’d been away? He opened his mouth to demand just that, but Sarah stepped right in front of him, a finger on her lips. She’d thrown on a T-shirt and underwear, but that was all. Chuck’s eyes bulged. “Would you please put some pants on!” he hissed at her. In a normal (if a bit strangled) voice, he called, “Maybe she, uh, went outside or something?”

“Why would she do that?”

“Um, to, I don’t know, to grab a smoke?”

On the other side of the door, there was a long pause. “I didn’t know Sarah smokes.”

“Uh, yeah. Like a chimney, actually—ow!” Chuck glared at Sarah, rubbing his hand over his injured arm. She glared right back. He hissed, “You, pants, now!” 

“What was that?” Ellie asked.

“Ah, nothing. Rapped my knuckle on the faucet. Be out in just a sec, sis!”

“Okay. I’ll go try and find Sarah.”

When the sound of Ellie’s footsteps had finally faded away, Chuck rounded on Sarah. “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you? You’re sick of this assignment, and so you’re going to kill me with the power of your legs so that you can go back to assassinating drug lords with a knitting needle. Or are you suddenly just allergic to pants now?”

“You’re the one that didn’t knock,” Sarah said, smirking and folding her arms over her chest. 

The action drew Chuck’s attention right to the logo on the T-shirt. “Wait a second, that’s a Harvard T-shirt. Great job, CIA costume department. Completely wrong coast.”

“Or maybe it’s not from the CIA ‘costume department,’ and it’s just a day for Alma Maters.” Sarah stepped into her jeans and, rising, fluffed her fingers through her hair. 

“Wait, Alma Maters? As in plural?” Chuck blinked. “You went to _Harvard_? As in, the school?”

“Well, I certainly didn’t go to Harvard the strip club. I need to sneak back to my room and finish getting ready. Be my look-out?”

“Sure, why not? It’s not like I haven’t already seen everything already anyway.” Chuck moved to obey, cracking the door open an inch and peering out. “It totally makes sense, by the way.”

“What?”

“That you went to Harvard.”

Sarah faltered as she bent to pick up her towel. There was a bit of a pause before she asked, “Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, isn’t that the school in ‘Legally Blonde?’”

That surprised a laugh out of her before she gave him a look torn between laughter and violence—admittedly, a default setting with her. “How the hell do you even _know_ that?”

“My ex-girlfriend loved that movie. You’re clear. Go.”

Sarah squeezed past him. Though there was plenty of space to pass, she deliberately rubbed against him, leaving behind a cloud of scent from her shampoo. He gulped. She laughed, and hurried from sight.

After a moment, he ambled out much slower, his hands in his pockets. “Whoa,” Awesome said as Chuck came back into the living room.

Chuck gave him a quizzical look.

“I was going to prescribe you something herbal because you looked wrecked, but you already look better. Must have been some trip to the bathroom.”

Ellie came in before Chuck could search his blank mind for _anything_ to say to that. “Honey, have you seen Sarah? I checked outside, but she’s not out smoking or anything. She’s vanished off the face of the earth. _Again_.”

“Sarah smokes?” Awesome asked.

“No, I don’t. I hate cigarettes.” Sarah appeared in the hallway, tucking her cell phone into her pocket. 

“Which is why,” Chuck deadpanned, “she only smokes cigars. Well, stogies, really.”

Sarah glared at him. She’d thrown shoes on and had twisted her hair back into one of those twisty chignon things that seemed complicated, but were probably the easiest thing in the world to pull off. 

“Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere—have you seen—”

“Bottom drawer, under the spare magazines.”

“Oh, thanks.” Ellie dashed off. 

Awesome, meanwhile, chuckled. “I love how you can do that. It’s like you have a database in your head.”

Chuck and Sarah stared at him.

“What is it?” Awesome glanced behind him, possibly searching for the ghost that had evidently made Chuck pale.

Sarah, of course, recovered first. “Ha, ha, no. No database. Just, you know, almost photographic memory.” She tapped her temple.

“Well, that makes sense. You did go to Harvard. By the way, up top. Awesome.” Awesome held up a hand for the inevitable high-five. It spoke of how often Sarah must see her roommate’s boyfriend that she returned the gesture automatically. “Best school on the east coast.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I personally was always more fond of Yale.”

Sarah gave Chuck her patented “Really, Chuck?” look.

“Of course,” Chuck said, fighting a grin, “I could be persuaded otherwise.”

“Persuade this,” Sarah muttered under her breath, and had Chuck grinning all over again.

It was, however, Ellie that came in and gave Chuck the finger before Sarah could. Or rather, she shoved a giant blue foam finger at him on her way to get her purse. “Hold onto that, will you?”

Chuck wrinkled his nose. “Wrong guy, El. Remember? I’m cheering on the red team today, and blue is no longer my color—ooh! It’ll be like ‘Red Versus Blue.’ Dibs on Grif!”

Ellie shook her head in the confused silence that followed. “Okay, then. You can be Grif. Everybody ready to go?”

“Road trip! Awesome!”

**11 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**STANFORD STADIUM**   
**14:59 PST**

“I still can’t believe I slept the whole way.” Chuck knew he was one very dangerously small step away from pouting, he couldn’t help it. If he focused on anything else, anything at all, he’d very likely break down in the middle of the walkway and turn into a gibbering mess. 

“Drooled the whole way, too,” he heard Sarah mutter as she brushed at her sleeve once more. 

“I mean, I didn’t get to point out my favorite landmarks or anything. The giant duck that used to be a wine shop, the ‘Ladles, Ladles, Ladles’ adult movie store. That spot where my car broke down my sophomore year, and Bryce and I spent two hours writing Zork code on the back of a ‘Merging Lanes’ sign…”

He immediately wanted to stuff his entire foot in his mouth when Sarah tensed.

Ellie frowned as she dodged a couple of fans that had painted themselves blue for the occasion. “Whatever happened to Bryce? You two used to be such good friends, and I don’t think I’ve heard you mention him once since you got back. Have you tried to get in touch with him?”

Chuck didn’t dare look at Sarah, who was climbing the bleachers right beside him. “Uh, yeah, actually. I gave him a call awhile back. He travels a lot, you know. For business.”

Or treason.

“He’s, ah, good,” he finished.

“Kind of surprised he’s not running the world by now.” 

They jostled in and out of the crowd as they tried to find their group in the stands. Chuck turned his attention to his breathing before he could realize just how many wild, loud, cheering fans had jammed themselves into Stanford Stadium. It spoke volumes about his life that he was looking forward to the part of the day where he’d probably end up coming face to face with a spy out to kill him and his partners.

But at least there’d be less people around then.

His cell phone beeped. He glanced at the screen: twenty minutes until the rendezvous with Casey. What was twenty minutes? 

A freaking eternity.

They found their paths just as the pre-game entertainment wrapped up. Chuck and Sarah were introduced around as Ellie’s traitorous younger brother and woefully misguided roommate, so they sat amidst good-natured riffing (more for the Stanford man, Chuck noticed, than the Harvard woman), two red shirts in a sea of blue. Sarah converted to her cover shyness, which meant she crowded close to him and Ellie. It almost made him smile. Sarah Walker could mow down the entire row of frat guys with nothing but her fists and her wits if she chose, but instead, she tilted her head forward and kept close to his side. As if he could possibly do a single thing that would protect her in _any_ situation, theoretical or otherwise.

They’d timed their arrival close to the kick-off, so Chuck didn’t have to wait long before the stands erupted in a roar. He clenched his fists on the thighs of his jeans and gritted his teeth, counting down to when he could slip away and join Casey—

“Chuck?” Sarah touched his wrist to get his attention. He glanced over—and up, as she’d apparently risen to her feet with the crowd. “Doing okay?”

Chuck looked over at the score board. Two minutes of game play had elapsed. He couldn’t recall a second of it.

“I—” Chuck shook his head as if in a fog. “I’m fine.”

“C’mon, boss.” Sarah hauled him to his feet. “You promised me a pretzel.”

“I did?”

Sarah leaned around him to grab Ellie’s attention. “Chuck just offered to buy me a pretzel. Want anything? He’s buying.”

“Hmm.” Ellie considered. “A hot dog and a Coke.”

“And you call yourself a doctor,” Chuck scoffed.

“Make it a Diet Coke, then.” Ellie stuck her tongue out at him. Chuck, however, didn’t miss the furtive look she sent after Sarah and him as they left. She’d been giving him the same look all day.

“Something’s up with Ellie,” he said as he and Sarah headed for the concession stand. “She’s suspicious about something.”

“Probably just worried her upstanding little brother is boffing his secretary.”

Chuck choked on nothing but air.

When Sarah glanced back, her eyes danced with mischief. “You okay, Chuck?”

“Office manager,” Chuck said in a strangled voice. “And no, I don’t think that’s it. Precisely.”

“Hm.” Around them, the Stanford fans let out a cheer—an interception or first down. Chuck wasn’t paying enough attention to care.

“I’ll talk to her. Later. Maybe get things cleared up.” Chuck shrugged. “Maybe we should just get you a cover boyfriend. Hey, you could fake date Casey!”

Sarah blanched. Somewhere near Green Library, Chuck was positive that Casey just let out one of his “what the hell has Bartowski done now?” grunts. 

He barreled on, using Sarah’s horrified silence as encouragement. “Just think about it. You and Casey could use your cover dates to keep Castle’s armory inventory squeaky clean, and after an appropriate amount of time has passed, he’ll get down on one knee and fake-propose in the middle of a combat zone, and you’ll have a shotgun wedding at the courthouse—”

Sarah made a small, terrified noise.

“Shotgun only because,” Chuck said quickly, “of course one of you will literally be carrying a shotgun. Give it a couple of years and if you’re both still here and together, you can start having cover children. Just think, they’ll have their father’s grunts and their mother’s eyes and—what are you staring at?”

“I’m not staring. I’m timing you in my head.”

“What? Why?”

“To see how long you can go on building my life with Casey before you realize what you’re saying and need to start beating your head against a brick wall.”

“Oh, I can go on for ages. I could probably describe all the way to your golden anniversary, when he gives you a diamond knife hilt and you surprise him with solid gold bullet-shaped cufflinks.”

Sarah wrinkled her nose. “I take it back. Maybe you don’t need to beat your head against a brick wall. Maybe I should do it for you.”

“Probably best not to. Don’t want to damage the Intersect.” 

They reached the concessions line and Sarah finally glanced over at Chuck, concern mixing with her smile. “Easier to think about me doing the deed with Casey than it is about Magnus and what’s coming, huh?”

Chuck’s eyes went briefly blurry before he screwed them shut. “Thanks for the mental image.”

“Just returning the favor.”

“Maybe you should just owe me one next time. And you know how it is with me and guns.”

“Honestly, you should be fine. Magnus’s weapon of choice is the crossbow.”

Chuck squinted at Sarah—her face was unreadable, but he knew she wasn’t above messing with him, given the chance. “Crap, and I left my plus five Cloak of Resistance in my _other_ Bag of Holding, which is back at my place. How much damage with a guy with a crossbow do, anyway?”

Sarah muttered something. If it sounded at all like, “One d-six,” Chuck figured it was mostly coincidence. So he barreled on, “Seems a little…”

Sarah’s smile flashed. “I shouldn’t be joking about this, as a crossbow can kill you just as dead as anything else, but, well, ask Casey sometime. Just be prepared to run.”

“Was that why he was limping last night? Did he get shot with a crossbow bolt?”

“I’m sworn to secrecy—”

“Chuck?”

Because he was grinning at Sarah, he saw her snap into “agent” mode. Her eyes hardened, her body tensed, her right hand dropped toward where she kept a weapon of some kind hidden.

Chuck, on the other hand, went completely flimsy. He felt like flopping backward, his body driven by the sheer impact of an emotional punch to the gut. The voice completely shut off every higher function in his brain, leaving his mind a blank mass sitting in his skull.

He turned very slowly.

And there she was, much, much closer than he’d seen her in years. He didn’t even had to look through binoculars. Because Jill Roberts was right there, giving him a puzzled, happy smile. “Chuck Bartowski?” she asked, just to be sure.

He blinked stupidly at her. “Yeah, that’s me,” came out of his mouth.

Jill’s smile brightened considerably. “Well, look at you, stranger! I thought you’d vanished off of the face of the earth, but no, here you are. It’s Jill. Jill Roberts? From Stanford?”

Chuck was pretty sure there was a socially acceptable response to that. He knew at point, he had likely known said socially acceptable response. Probably. But all that came to mind now was a sort of “Uh” noise that looped endlessly through his empty mind.

Now, Jill’s smile dimmed somewhat. “Um, Chuck, are you okay?”

He was saved from answering by a nudge at his side. “Ohmigod,” said a voice, a voice that sounded absurdly like the illegal crossbreed between Sarah Walker and a Valley Girl. Chuck blinked foggily at his companion, who had shifted from the somewhat-reserved secret agent he knew and adored to something from the planet Malibu. “Are you Jill freakin’ Roberts? I can’t believe it. Hi, I’m Sarah, I’m Chuck’s—”

Hastily, Chuck cleared his throat.

“Office manager,” Sarah finished without making it seem like she might have said “girlfriend” at all. “He talks about you all the time. I can’t believe I get to meet you.”

Now she calls herself an office manager, Chuck thought. Figures.

Confusion flavored Jill’s smile now. “He has? Wow. Um, only good things I hope?”

Sarah smiled and laid her hand against Chuck’s elbow to get his attention. “Why don’t I get the stuff, you stay here and catch up?”

Chuck raised his eyebrows at that. Abandoning the field? He couldn’t say he blamed her—he was torn between wanting to run away somewhere far, and brimming with curiosity. So many questions swirled to the surface. He forced them back as he pulled his wallet out and handed Sarah a twenty. “You said I owed you a pretzel, remember?”

Sarah took the money. “R-right.”

After she’d turned away and rejoined the line, Chuck stuck his hands in his pockets. Would he feel awkward, he wondered, if he hadn’t spent five years in a hole in the ground? Probably. “Sorry about that,” he said, trying to put a “heh, heh, look at how funny Chuck can be” note into his voice. “I’m kind of a slave-driver, I guess.”

“Really? What is it that you’re doing, these days? How…have you been?”

She looked much better in person. Maybe it was the sunlight that filtered so perfectly over her brown ponytail, bringing out the hidden red highlights like it always had during their study dates on the quad. Maybe it was the fact that he wasn’t looking at her through shaky binocular lenses. He felt his stomach plunge, and barely remembered to answer her question.

“I recently came back from working abroad—I’ve got a small software firm, nothing major. Pacific Securities, LLC.” Chuck could feel sweat dribbling back down between his shoulder blades, and wished that he’d worn some kind of jacket, any jacket at all, that would hide that fact. Of course, he was doomed to sweat, with all of these people around, but now that his ex-girlfriend was standing right in front of him, why did he have to sweat so damn much? “It’s small, a three-man operation really, but it gets me through the—how are you? What have you been up to? The great Jill Roberts—it is still Roberts, right? I’m not pissing off some husband by standing here talking to you?—conquering the world, right? World domination was your goal?”

Jill laughed. If she sounded nervous, Chuck figured it was purely his imagination.

“Ha, no, it’s still Roberts. I’m finishing up the last year of my doctorate in the program at SC.”

“Oh.” Chuck blinked. “Well, congratulations. When do you become Dr. Roberts, then? Who, coincidentally, was my pediatrician. Not that you needed to know that, even if he was a really nice guy…” He trailed off and wondered if he was flexible enough to actually shove one of his chucks into his mouth. If he kept going like this, he would find out one way or another.

Jill’s smile blossomed. “Was he? I’m glad to hear that. And I finish in December, actually. I’m so close to done, just making a few final tweaks to my thesis. I can practically smell the freedom.”

“That’s—that’s wonderful.”

“So, working abroad? Exciting, isn’t it? I’ve been tentatively offered a job working in France.”

He couldn’t stop the smile. “Really? That’s great. I know how much you’ve always loved the French Riviera.”

“I still do. And what about you? You didn’t just drop off of the face of the earth for five years, did you?” Jill smiled and nudged him in the arm. He froze. Perhaps Jill noticed; concern flitted into those brown eyes he remembered better than his own sometimes. “Are you—are you okay? You look a little ill.”

He felt a little ill. Chuck pushed it all down by sheer force of will and managed to plaster a smile on his face, though it felt more like a grimace. “I’m fine,” he said when he was sure his voice wouldn’t croak like a robot’s. “And no, ha, ha, didn’t drop off of the face of the earth for five years. I was in—Poland!” He blurted out the first name that came to mind.

“Really? Poland?” Jill rocked backward on her sneakers, an old move. “I didn’t know you knew Polish, Chuck.”

“I’m really, really terrible at it.” Chuck forced a laugh. He’d convinced Sarah to teach him a few words, but they’d fled with the rest of his capacity for higher thought. “I was, um, working for an agency based out of Warsaw. Turns out tech speak is universal. Who knew, right? But I wanted to be closer to Ellie and everybody, so I came back, started my own company. Hired Sarah back there.” He jerked his head toward the concessions line. “She’s scarily efficient.”

Or just scary, whenever somebody crossed her.

Jill’s smile may have flickered, though Chuck had no idea why it would. “Yeah, I was going to ask about that. You brought your office manager to the game with you?”

“Actually, Ellie did. That’s how I met Sarah, really. She and Ellie are friends.”

“Oh.” Jill tucked her hair behind her ears. “Sorry, I thought she might be, like a date or something.”

Why did everybody think that? First Ellie and her “boffing” suspicions, and now Jill? Hell, even Morgan had made hints.

“Trust me,” Chuck said, “when I say she’s way too good for me. Um, what about you? Are you, uh, here with a date?”

“Just another Stanford undergrad in my program at SC. We drove up together to save on gas.” Jill’s expression softened. “I never heard back from you, five years ago, and I wanted to—”

Chuck’s phone beeped. Torn between relief and sheer aggravation, he held up a finger and scrambled for it. Casey’s angry visage filled the screen behind the text message: “Where the hell are you and Walker??? Get over here now!”

Chuck figured the grunt was implied.

Proving that she had a sixth sense about these things, Sarah appeared at his elbow and glanced at the phone in his hand. “Got the stuff,” she said without commenting. “Ellie likes relish and mustard on her hot dogs, right?”

Why did it continually amaze him that the CIA would know that sort of thing? “Uh, yeah. Hold on just a second, though.” He turned to Jill. “What was it you were going to say?”

Her smile had all but vanished. “Actually, never mind. It’s not important.”

But it is, Chuck wanted to say. It’s so damn important that I spent five years wondering.

However, duty called. Chuck possibly had a raging crossbow-carrying fiend to face in his old college library, and Jill probably wanted to get back to watching the game.

She proved him right by smiling sadly at him. “I should get back, Justin’s probably wondering if I fell in or something. It was nice seeing you again, Chuck. And, ah, nice to meet you, Sarah.” She reached out to pat Chuck on the arm; he nearly stepped sideways into Sarah, but avoided it at the last second.

Sarah let the motion go without comment. “Likewise,” she told Jill, giving the other woman a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Y-yeah, it was nice seeing you again,” Chuck said, though the jury was still out on that one. “Uh, don’t be a stranger.”

“Same goes.” Jill melted into the crowd.

Sarah gave him approximately a minute to stand quietly, reeling, while the crowds moved all around him. In the end, he broke the silence first. “Sorry to leave you with the food-grabbing duties. Here, I can take some stuff.”

“I got you a pretzel,” Sarah said, handing him the hot dog and Diet Coke. “So you don’t steal all of mine like we both know you’ll try to do.”

Chuck mustered up a weak smile at that. “To be fair, I only did that once.”

“Uh-huh, right. C’mon, let’s take this stuff back to Ellie and make our excuses so that Casey doesn’t have a conniption.”

He let her muscle her way through the crowd, as she was better at it, and probably wasn’t in a state of emotional shock like him. Could he have come across as even more of an idiot? He wasn’t the smoothest of guys to start out, but—had he really asked if her name was still Roberts? And babbled on for twenty minutes about his childhood doctor? Good one, Bartowski. Maybe next time you should charm the girl by talking about your cavities.

Hell, maybe he should have let Sarah introduce herself as his girlfriend. They’d played a married couple before, after all, and having a woman like Sarah pretend to be actually interested in a nerd like him would be a real social win. Except…he wanted to stand on his own power. He couldn’t always just hide behind Sarah Walker whenever something scared him. And pretending to let Sarah Walker be his hot girlfriend just wasn’t fair to her. She wasn’t some eye candy to be displayed like a friggen’ trophy, after all.

He turned to say as much to her, just to make sure there weren’t any hurt feelings—partners, after all, needed to be on the same footing—but she was already studying him intensely. When he blinked at her, he could have sworn the faintest tinge of red started up around her cheeks. “Are you okay?” she said, stopping him at the top of the bleachers.

“Wh-what? Yeah, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Give me an honest answer, Chuck. Are you going to be able to handle going into that library, knowing Magnus might be waiting for us?”

“I don’t have much of a choice, do I? I couldn’t get my bearings well enough with the security feeds Casey tried to show me this morning.” Chuck squinted at her. “We’ve faced scarier things than crossbow-toting psychopaths with questionable names, Sarah. Why are you really asking?”

Sarah bit her lip. “I know she meant a lot to you. You carry her picture around, after all. I just want to make sure your head’s in a good place in case something happens. I can call Casey, put it off for a few hours—”

“No, I’d rather get it over with.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

Sarah searched his face once more, but took him at his word. They started clambering down the walkway to their group, while the UCLA fans let out a roaring cheer. Under it all, Chuck leaned in close. Sarah had made an excellent point about wondering where his head was at. The least he could do was reassure her. “Look, Jill happened a long time ago. It was just a surprise, that’s all.”

“I said it’s okay, Chuck.”

It shouldn’t have been okay. He should have been approaching Fleming-induced levels of rage, but he was just too drained from all of the crowds, from constantly keeping up a cheerful face around his sister and Awesome, even from the constant nearness of Sarah. He’d have to simply have his full freak-out later on, when he finally alone, tucked into the corner of his room at the Bachelor Pad.

At least Sarah hadn’t said anything about the stalking, he thought. She swapped items with him, telling him to wait in the aisle while she carried the hot dog and soda to Ellie. Whatever she said must have worked to get them both off of the hook from watching at least the first half of the game, for Ellie glanced over and gave him a small “Go ahead” wave. He waved back and waited, as instructed, for Sarah to come back.

“I told Ellie you wanted to show me your old haunts and that we’d be back to watch UCLA lose in the second half,” Sarah said when she returned.

Chuck handed over her pretzel. “And Ellie was okay with that?”

“She says have fun, be safe, call if we run into any trouble.” Sarah shrugged. “So…ready to go face a guy with a crossbow?”

“I could really use that plus five cloak of resistance right about now. And maybe some new pants for later. Just in case.” Chuck made it a point to grin over at Sarah.

She rolled her eyes back, but led the way out of the stadium.

Chuck glanced back to his sister, and Awesome’s cabal of frat guys, just the once on the way out. He was surprised to see Ellie looking back, watching them go. Or rather, he saw, watching Sarah go. And her eyes were most definitely narrowed in suspicion.

Uh-oh.


	20. Books and Battlegrounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others. — _George Shinn_

**11 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**OUTSIDE LARKIN HALL**   
**19:43 PST**

“What the hell took you two so long?” Casey hopped out of the back of the Dodge Charger sitting not-so-inconspicuously a few blocks from the library. Even if the mission had called for plainclothes, he had evidently taken the black tactical dress uniform to heart. Black pants, a black shirt, a black jacket. A black glare of death really completed the ensemble.

Despite the furious look, Chuck opened his mouth to take the blame. It was his fault that they were running so far behind. Even if Sarah had set the pace for their walk across campus, he knew that she’d only done so to cover for him and to give him time to push the whole conversation with Jill back into some corner of his mind where it wouldn’t interfere with their mission.

Sarah, however, just elbowed him aside. “I got distracted,” she said.

Casey growled. “Bartowski…”

“What? Why is that my fault?”

“Oh, lay off him, Casey. I like football.” Sarah gave Casey her sunniest smile. “Sorry.”

That was odd, Chuck thought. She didn’t sound the faintest bit apologetic. To spare her Casey-flavored scorn, he forced a laugh. “Casey, is it true that you got shot with a crossbow bolt?”

Casey’s growl was only audible to small creatures and Chuck. “Who the hell told you—Walker!”

Sarah affected an innocent look as she climbed up into the van to retrieve the rest of her weapons. “What? He guessed.”

“You guessed?” Casey demanded.

“Well, you were limping kind of obviously.” Chuck wrestled down the urge to dive behind the nearest large object from the power of Casey’s glare alone. “And Sarah told me Magnus’s weapon of choice is the crossbow. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. So, where’d you get hit?”

He actually took a step back when Casey’s glare shifted to a growl. “Drop it, Bartowski.”

“Must’ve been somewhere bad,” Chuck said before his brain could shut his mouth up.

Indeed, Casey looked like he might simply lunge for the other man’s throat, except that Sarah came out of the van just then and smiled at them both. “If you kill him,” she told Casey, “he can’t tell us where the intel is.”

Casey must have really wanted him dead, Chuck discovered, as the other man spent nearly thirty seconds—thirty long, interminable seconds—obviously debating if it was worth breaking orders over. In the end, he shut the van door behind Sarah, glared at Chuck, and jerked his head: let’s move, team.

“Wait a second,” Chuck said as Sarah handed him his tranq gun. He shoved it back in his waistband and followed the other two agents across the street. “Casey, did you get shot in the ass with a crossbow?”

Casey’s shoulders stiffened, but mercifully, he didn’t turn and strangle Chuck on the spot. Sarah, however, gave him a look of laughing exasperation. “Quit, you,” she said. “It bears repeating—if he kills you, we’re never going to find this intel.”

She had a fair point.

“And, yes, for the record, Casey _did_ get shot in the ass with a crossbow bolt,” Sarah finished.

Casey and Chuck both stared at her. “You realize that it’s theoretically possible for Casey to kill _you_ and still get the intel?” Chuck finally asked, as it looked like sheer anger might be paralyzing Casey’s vocal cords.

Sarah shrugged. “He can try. Probably bleed to death before he gets five steps.”

“Or his heart explodes from your kung fu ways,” Chuck muttered. He held his hand up in a gesture of innocence when Casey growled yet again. “We can debate long and hard about who can kill whom first or survive what karate chop to what body part. However, there is still some sort of disk in Bryce’s dumpsite in that library. Maybe we should get that first and the two of you can kill each other. All I ask is that you wait until we get back to Burbank, as my sister and her boyfriend will get suspicious if they have to hold conversations with Sarah’s corpse on the road trip back.”

Though Casey looked intrigue by any situation that might involve Sarah’s corpse, he dropped the subject with a final, threatening growl. Chuck wasn’t sure if the growl was acquiescence to any part of his suggestion—fighting, killing Sarah, or waiting until they got back to Burbank. Or hell, killing Chuck, as that was always on the menu.

Maybe he shouldn’t mention the crossbow thing again for a little while. Just to be safe.

When they reached the library, Casey pulled something out of his pocket. “Reactivated your ID,” he said, handing over the plastic card to Chuck. “Couldn’t Photoshop the stupid grin off, though.”

Chuck rolled his eyes. “What’s the matter, Photoshop too hard for you? Maybe you should just stick with MS Paint.”

He couldn’t quite hear what Casey muttered in reply, but he didn’t figure it was kind to either his sexual practices or his ancestors. Bemused by that, and Sarah’s quiet snicker, he glanced down at his old student ID. He immediately regretted it.

“What is it?” Sarah asked when his entire body tensed. She instinctively moved in front of him, eyes sweeping over the library in search of danger.

Chuck shook off the half-migraine. “Uh, wow. My file in the Intersect has every grade for every paper I wrote at Stanford, and all of my IQ testing. It’s higher than I remember.”

Casey slowly took his hand off of his gun hilt. “You just flashed on yourself?”

Wordlessly, Chuck held up the ID.

“Anything interesting?” Sarah wanted to know.

There had been, but now really wasn’t the time. Chuck tucked a tiny nugget of information away and mustered up a semi-confident smile for his teammates. “We’re good. Let’s go rescue Professor Fleming’s porn collection.”

They made it through the scanners at the front doors easily—Casey, Chuck saw, had used a picture of himself in a suit for the ID. Sometimes Chuck wondered if the government agent actually understood the definition of blending in—and headed straight upstairs to the Scary Stacks on the third floor. The spookiest floor in the building would always be the basement, where the light sensors worked only when they wanted to and the smell of slight decay permeated everything. He wondered if that had changed at all. Probably not.

The rest of the library had changed in small ways, but nothing massive. Chuck drank in the details as they walked. Now that they were actually inside the library, where there might be a mercenary after the intel, the prospect of getting shot with a crossbow suddenly seemed a lot more pressing. As Sarah had pointed out earlier, a crossbow could kill him just as dead as a SIG or a bazooka or a heart attack (all three of which were options in his day-to-day life, Chuck felt).

So he chose to focus on the nostalgia. As a scholarship student, he had clocked so many hours in the library, battling the constant paranoia of losing said scholarship and having to return to Burbank as a failure. Bryce and Jill cracked that maybe he should use his MacGuyver skills to convert his study carrel on the fourth floor into a cot or at least a hotel suite of some type. They’d even taken turns bringing him food. Of course, Jill bringing him food usually meant dinner and making out in the stacks. Bryce meant a dinner and a dart-gun battle.

Man, they’d had some epic wars.

He must have made a “heh” noise, for Sarah glanced over at him. “What is it?”

“Oh, nothing to do with the mission. Just thinking about all of the times I had in here. Traditions and the like.”

“Traditions?”

They’d reached the third level. Chuck scanned the area around the stairs, trying to match his memory to his time five years before. With a shrug, he headed left. It wasn’t quite a gut feeling, but close enough. “Yeah, we were really big on traditions. You know, the birthday shower tradition—”

“The one shower a year you nerds got?” Casey wondered under his breath.

Chuck rolled his eyes. He’d always felt he had exquisite hygiene. “Not quite. Your friends gang up on you on your birthday and throw you in the shower.”

“And?” Casey prompted as Chuck led them all around a set of shelves. 

“Um, that was pretty much it.”

“Exciting.” Casey snorted. “Least they could’ve done was thrown a hooker in there with you.”

“Oh, yes, my girlfriend at the time would have _loved_ that.” Chuck rolled his eyes. He made the next right turn on instinct. “And for your information, all of our traditions were not totally lame. It was always kind of fun to try and beat campus security so that we could dye the fountains red right before a big game, and there was always—” He turned left in the maze of bookshelves and stopped. “The tradition of having sex in the Scary Stacks. The ones in the basement, not up here. I never actually got to try that one, actually, and I’m probably always going to be a little disappointed about that.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing the Scary Stacks,” Sarah said.

“Thanks for the offer,” Chuck said, “but tradition has it that you have to do it in your final semester of your senior year and—who-wah?” He shook his head as if to clear water from it. “Did you just—”

Casey snapped his fingers to get their attention. “Keep it in your pants, Walker. Bartowski, why the hell are we just standing here?”

“What? Oh, right. Just need to see where we are.” Even while his mind whirled, threatening to show him the images of Sarah that were now permanently locked into his brainfile, Chuck looked around the library. He all but smacked his forehead with his palm when he realized it. “I’m an idiot.”

“What’d you do now?” Casey immediately growled.

Chuck simply reached forward, felt for the hidden catch under the bookshelf about chest height. It gave without protest and the data disk tumbled into his palm. “Ta-da.”

“That’s it?” Casey asked, snatching the disk from Chuck’s fingers.

“I know, rather anticlimactic, isn’t it?” Chuck stooped so that he could check the rest of the dumpsite, hoping to find something else—anything else. He and Bryce had never used their dumpsites to leave messages for each other, but then again, neither he nor Bryce had ever turned traitor without any explanation whatsoever. There was a first time for everything.

The dumpsite was empty. Not even a dart for old times’ sake. Chuck fought back a bitter wash of disappointment.

“Okay, then. If only all of them were this easy.” Sarah reached around Chuck to close up the trapdoor under the shelf. “Let’s head back to the football game.”

“Oh, joy.”

They fell into step as they headed back toward the stairs, taking the same convoluted route they’d used to get to the dumpsite. Maybe it was the big game going on across campus, or the fact that it was Saturday night, but the library was almost barren of all signs of life. Of course, Chuck thought, there was probably some solitary geek sitting up in a study carrel on the fourth floor that probably wouldn’t leave until the security guard made his final pre-closing rounds.

He wondered if Kevin was still on duty on Saturday nights.

When Sarah grabbed his arm before the final turn to the stairs, he froze on instinct. “What? What is it?”

“Shh.” She cocked her head, listening for something he’d never be able to hear. The woman had ears like a bat.

On Chuck’s other side, Casey drew his weapon. Chuck didn’t reach for the tranq gun—not with Sarah so close by. He’d take his chances with the enemy and being a quick draw during his dart gun wars with Bryce.

“Get low,” Sarah ordered, pushing on Chuck’s shoulder to ensure that he obeyed. She nodded at Casey; he moved to the end of the aisle, his boots making no noise on the carpet. Chuck crouched, trying to peer through the shelves while above him, Sarah eased books aside to give herself a small window. She swore just loud enough for Chuck to hear.

“What is it?” he hissed.

Sarah ignored him to signal to Casey. After a moment, Chuck dragged out his memory banks and interpreted the signal from his training at Officer Candidate School. Seven men, incoming. Armed. And Magnus Ragnhildur with them, of course. Casey rolled his eyes and signaled something back that Chuck couldn’t interpret. Something rude, he figured, as the finger Sarah shot back at Casey didn’t strike Chuck as being an official tactical signal.

So they were on a level in Green Library with Magnus and seven armed mercenaries. That was just fantastic. Chuck peered through the shelves, moving books to one side as Sarah had. If he squinted, he could make out a set of combat boots guarding the stairs—and their escape route.

He pulled the tranq gun out and offered it to Sarah, gesturing in the guard’s direction with his free hand. She shook her head and cupped a hand around her ear. Too loud.

Well, in that case…

Chuck signaled to Casey and tried to sign that he had an idea. Unfortunately, he’d always sucked at charades, a point that was driven home when Casey stalked back and grabbed him by the throat. “Speak, idiot!” he hissed.

“I know a way out,” Chuck said, trying to keep his voice down. ‘There’s an emergency staircase in the back. We can go around the main staircase to the fourth floor—I know how to bypass the alarm on that door.”

Sarah and Casey glanced at each other and shrugged. “Lead the way, numb-nuts.”

They had to sneak around to the opposite side of the staircase, which unfortunately only led up, but at least Magnus hadn’t thought to post a guard there as well. Chuck’s heart pounded loud enough to drown out an entire drum corps on speed, but none of Magnus’s men seemed to hear them. He focused his attention forward, on getting up the stairs. Sarah and Casey would protect him. They would finish getting up the stairs, Chuck would rig the door just like he used to back in school, and they would simply stroll out of the library as though nothing had happened.

Nice and easy. Simple even.

Too bad the universe hated him.

“Hey!” The shout stopped him halfway up the stairs.

Chuck froze. Sarah didn’t. She whirled on the spot, a knife suddenly in hand. A flick of her wrist and that same knife sprouted from the guard’s shoulder a millisecond later. Chuck didn’t get a chance to stare, for Casey hauled on his arm, pulling him up the stairs. He had the choice of going along or being dragged.

He went along.

Footsteps pounded behind them, drowning out the guard’s swearing. Chuck got a brief, hysterical flash of some librarian trying to shush a band of mercenaries. At the top of the stairs, he and Casey went left, Sarah headed right. “Sarah!” Chuck cried, trying to turn and follow.

Casey, however, was having none of that. He grabbed Chuck by the scruff of the neck and hauled. “She’ll be fine, let’s go.” They headed deep into the stacks, out of sight of their pursuers. “Which way?”

“Um…” He lost precious seconds looking around and orienting himself. “This way!”

Hopefully, somewhere else in the library, Sarah had developed a mental connection that allowed her to find the door. Or, better yet, evade the bad guys, maybe take out a few, and beat Chuck and Casey to the door. Chuck could hear said bad guys tromping around, looking for him and Casey. But they didn’t have his skill with treating this library as a war zone or even Casey’s commando abilities. He led Casey up rows of shelves, ducking behind endcaps and—

“You do realize that the shortest distance between points is a straight line, don’t you?” Casey grabbed Chuck by the arm. “Door. Now. Go.”

Chuck shrugged, turned, and started to sprint.

Started to. He managed a few running steps before one of Magnus’s thugs rounded the corner and pointed a gun right at his chest.

Chuck froze on the spot.

If anything, they’d startled the mercenary just as much. He shifted his grip on the gun, his eyes shifting from Chuck to the armed Casey, and opened his mouth, possibly to alert the others. 

Chuck felt like some sort of puppet-master had taken hold of the strings jerking him around. Before he realized exactly what he was doing, he lurched forward, swept out his left hand in a blade stroke, knocking the gun away. His right hand swung up in a hard right cross. It caught the guard right on the side of his jaw.

Bad idea.

The guard dropped like a rock.

Chuck’s hand exploded at the contact of broken and damaged skin to the guard’s face. He sucked in a gasp, ready to let out a scream of pain—

Casey slapped a hand over his mouth. “Keep it inside! You’ll give us away!”

It took every bit of willpower Chuck possessed, but he swallowed his scream, a new layer of sweat popping up on his skin from the effort. His hand throbbed. It felt exactly as though somebody had taken a hot iron to it and pressed so hard that he could all but smell the burning flesh. Every heartbeat flooded fresh pain into his knuckles. He gritted his teeth and slowly forced the pain to recede, inch by slippery inch, until his brain could function again.

“Good?” Casey demanded.

When Chuck nodded, the other man removed his hand. 

“Good. Now tell me where the hell you learned how to throw a punch like that.”

“Mortal Kombat,” Chuck whispered, his voice raspy. “Or Army Officer Candidate School. I forgot how much it hurts!” Especially with torn up knuckles.

Before Casey could reply, another thug came around the corner. They blinked at him in shock. He blinked back.

The roundhouse caught them all by surprise, the guard most of all. He was still wearing the shocked look as he fell and landed on his buddy.

Sarah appeared in the space he’d been standing in. She took in Casey, Chuck holding his injured hand, and the first unconscious guard on the carpet. “What the hell?”

“No time. Let’s move.” Casey grabbed Chuck, pointed him in the direction they’d been traveling earlier, and shoved. Chuck stumbled forward, already running. They were nearing the door, he knew, which was out of the way from the rest of the library, but situated on the perfect corner in relation to his dorm. Without rigging the door, he’d have to walk an extra three blocks back to his dorm.

He thanked his lucky stars he’d been so lazy back in the day.

“We’ve got company!” Sarah warned, her voice still only loud enough to carry to him and Casey. Indeed, Chuck could see black blurs through the shelves as they ran—Magnus’s men running alongside them. They’d be out in the open in less than five seconds. On the other side of the gap, they’d head into the older, wooden shelves that extended far over their heads and provided a better cover.

They just had to get there first. Chuck stretched his legs out just a bit farther.

They split up when they hit the older shelves. Sarah sprinted off to the left, while Casey stayed right on Chuck’s heels. He pushed a hand up against Chuck’s back to keep him running. “She’s going to circle around, take them out. Keep moving!”

They were still outnumbered six to two. Two to one, really, Chuck thought, his brain automatically simplifying the fraction. Well, it was two to one as far as he was concerned. With Sarah and Casey being as supremely powerful as they were, it was more like a one to one ratio.

“Wait a second.” Casey held up a hand. Halt. Panting, Chuck did so. “Something’s off.”

What? What is it?”

“They’ve got us surrounded.” Casey squinted around, but neither of them could see anything through the shelves. “Get ready to shoot, and get low. This could get ugly quick.”

“Or we could go up,” Chuck said foggily, craning his neck.

“What?”

“Up!” Without bothering to explain any more, Chuck scrambled up the nearest bookshelf, kicking books aside in his haste, and still trying to be quiet. It wobbled dangerously, but the weight of the ancient textbooks kept it anchored enough that he could climb to the top. Casey may have started to ask what the hell he was thinking, but they both heard the footsteps approaching. His eyes widened; he scaled the shelf opposite Chuck and crouched, one finger over his mouth—as if Chuck were going to intentionally make noise and give away their position.

Now what? Chuck wondered.

Casey seemed to read his mind. He gestured at his gun and then at Chuck. It took Chuck a couple of seconds to catch on. He fumbled for the tranq gun, glad for the modifications Casey had made to the grip for sweaty hands. When he was gripping the weapon with both hands, he couldn’t stop the small, sardonic grin. Still playing dart guns in the library after all of these years.

Only this time, losing meant dying.

Meep.

The footsteps drew nearer. Casey held up a hand—wait, hold still. Neither moved as one of the thugs walked down the aisle, gun out, a mere four feet below them. He peered left and right, as if they could have hidden inside the shelves, but never up. Still, Chuck held his breath until the thug rounded the corner.

One scary situation down. Millions to go.

He turned to Casey to hiss, “Now what do we do?” He never got the chance.

A feminine grunt, possibly of pain or surprise, rang out through the stacks. Chuck jolted to his feet. 

“Bartowski!” Casey hissed, glaring. “Stay put!”

“It’s Sarah!” 

“Shut up, and stay there. Walker can handle herself!”

Chuck glared. “She shouldn’t have to!” And before Casey could reach across the space and grab him, he took off running down the shelf, his chucks sliding in the dust. He hopped the first set of shelves before he think to psych himself out. The quiet thump that followed meant that Casey was still right on his heels. Chuck ran for the next gap.

“Hey!”

They’d been spotted. Damn it.

Chuck ran faster. Behind him, he heard an ominous thud, but no gunshot. He risked a few seconds to glance back, spotted Casey on the ground standing over the thug that had seen them. “Go, Bartowski!”

Okay, Casey had it handled. Chuck hopped the next shelf, wobbled a little when he misjudged the landing a little bit, and began sprinting again. He didn’t think he’d moved this fast in Green Library since he’d misread the due date on his quarterly final paper his sophomore year. And back then, he wouldn’t have dreamed of running across the tops of the shelves like he was right now. He probably would’ve been expelled.

As if you could expel Chuck Bartowski, model student.

He was pretty sure Sarah was up ahead to the left, but she hadn’t made any noise past the first grunt, so all he could do was pray that he had been right. He ran hard. One more shelf to hop…

And there she was, not in any distress or pain, but in constant, fluid motion. A killing machine, almost. It was Sarah Walker versus three of Magnus’s thugs, and it was obvious from only a glance which side was the outnumbered one.

Chuck skidded to a halt. Kung fu goddess, he thought, all but gaping. How on earth did she know where to be when? She moved with such ease, dodging, sidestepping, evading, attacking. A short punch to the gut there, a high-kick to the face. It was like a mortal dance to some instinctive, fierce music that nobody but the battle participants could hear. 

A roundhouse, beautifully executed. One thug down, two to go.

It was obvious after just a few seconds that the thugs weren’t the masters of the martial arts. Street fighters, Chuck would have called them, minus the weird hair-dos and, oh, the Asian influence. They fought dirty, mean. One got in what Chuck decided was a lucky hit. Sarah’s head snapped back—she stumbled back, apparently temporarily stunned—

Something nearby Chuck growled. An actual animal noise of fury.

Oh. That was him.

He launched himself from the top of the shelf, arcing through the air, intending only to take out the one who had hurt Sarah Walker, vengeance burning hot.

He missed completely. Maybe the thug saw him coming, maybe it was just bad luck. Either way, the thug side-stepped. Chuck landed on his feet, tripped forward, and went down to his hands and knees.

The thugs stared.

Sarah didn’t. She let out some kind of high-pitched kung fu yell and whirled into yet another textbook roundhouse kick. Thug One fell. A left cross and Thug Two joined his pal on the ground.

In an instant, Sarah was crouched next to Chuck, helping pull him to his feet. “Oh, my God, are you okay? What on earth were you thinking? You could have broken your leg!”

“Or your fool neck,” Casey added as he came around the corner, limping slightly.

“Only thing wounded is my pride,” Chuck assured them both, though his hand was still killing him from the punch. “I was trying to help.”

“Next time, you should stay put. I can handle this sort of thing.” Sarah smiled apologetically at him, just a flicker, and turned her attention to the unconscious bodies on the ground. “Okay, that makes five that I took out, and the one that Chuck did.”

“I got one, too,” Casey said, looking put out that he and Chuck had managed to neutralize the same number. 

“So you didn’t take out Magnus?” Sarah asked him.

“No, I—”

“Get down!” A glint in the corner of his eye was all that Chuck needed. He fell forward more than dove, taking Sarah with him. They landed with a gust of air and a tangle of limbs. 

The crossbow bolt thudded into the shelf where Sarah’s head had been nanoseconds before.

They both stared at it.

Sarah recovered first, shoving Chuck off of her. She hauled him away from the target zone, using her body to cover his from any further fire. He would have protested, but she had already dragged him out of danger by the time his brain connected the dots. He could only be grateful that the crossbow took so long to reload. Though it did bring up an important question.

“Which country on the planet would send their spies out armed with a crossbow? Florin?” Chuck demanded once he, Sarah, and Casey were all safe behind a shelf. Sarah and Casey were both on one knee, guns out and trained on both possible exits from their barricade.

“Iceland,” Sarah said.

Chuck blinked. “We’re up against an Icelandic spy?”

“Well, officially, Iceland is unaware of Magnus’s activities.” Casey rolled his eyes, not at Chuck but at the unseen Magnus. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the desk, pushing it at Chuck. “Take that. Walker, make sure he gets to the door and then come back and help me with scene clean-up. I’m going to go take out Magnus.”

Chuck stuffed the data disk in his pocket. When Sarah jerked her head, indicating that he should follow her, he went without question. Sarah and Casey had once again risen to save the day. Casey waited until they were at the opposite end of the aisle before he crouched low and sneaked around the corner, out of sight.

He’d be okay, Chuck thought. It would take a hell of a lot more than a crossbow to stop an angry John Casey. And no way was he letting Magnus Ragnhildur get away when doing so meant that he only took out as many bad guys as pathetic Chuck Bartowski.

“Which way?” Sarah whispered.

Chuck edged by her so that he could lead the way. She had her gun out now, not that it mattered. Anybody on the fourth floor would have heard all of the running and fighting, which was louder than it always seemed on TV. One thing was certain: the CIA and the NSA would definitely have to confiscate all of the security camera footage from the library if they wanted to hide the identities of two of their top agents and their Intersect. It was probably a useless idea. If he knew the students on duty, the library techs would all be watching right now with popcorn. And later, they’d try to sell it on the Internet.

Tuition didn’t come cheap these days, after all.

He led Sarah to the door without any further trouble. She stood guard as he knelt by the door, rigging it not to set off the fire alarm. It took him less than a minute to remember the proper sequence. He looked up at her with a grin, but she simply nodded and pulled him to his feet. “Go,” she whispered. “Head back to the football game, stay with Ellie and the others. You’ll be okay.” Her expression told him she expected nothing less. He straightened a little bit. “I’ll be there as soon as the scene is wrapped.”

“Sarah, Magnus is—”

“Casey and I will be _fine_ ,” Sarah said.

“Okay.” When she put it like that, he had no choice but to believe her.

“If you run into any trouble, anything at all, I want you to press the panic button on your watch and immediately head for the most public area you can find, okay? I will find you.” Sarah met his eyes and waited until he nodded back to show that he understood what she wasn’t saying. “Go.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Chuck pushed the door open. Halfway through it, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “Stay safe.”

“You too.”

She waited until he was in the stairwell and safe from Magnus. As he headed downstairs, he glanced back and saw her take off, hurrying to back up her partner, the Intersect and the mission objective now out of danger.

**11 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**AUXILIARY LIBRARY**   
**20:49 PST**

He knew that he should listen to Sarah and go right back to the football game. In fact, he’d stood outside of the stadium with every intent and purpose of obeying for what felt like a good half hour. But somewhere inside that stadium was Jill Roberts, ex-girlfriend, and just one of thousands of people. Thousands of people, Chuck knew, that he could embarrass himself in front of. Thousands of people that he was just too tired to face.

So he’d gone to the nearest safe haven—well, safe haven that wasn’t Sarah Walker. He was under no illusions there. Because she wasn’t right next to him, he could admit it. His panic attacks were less severe or, really, nonexistent whenever she was around. She’d saved him, after all, from fading into obscurity in a frozen bunker five hundred miles south of nowhere. She’d been his only source of strength for one very terrifying week on the run, and she continued to be a sort of beautiful, blonde crutch to lean on. He should return the favor by heeding her orders and pretending to be a good little Stanford fan in a game they were probably losing anyway. 

Instead, he swiped his ID at the door of Auxiliary Library (though it was just a useless gesture; the sole library worker on duty didn’t even look up from her magazine) and headed into the stacks. This was where all of the unloved, unnecessary books lived. Overflow library, auxiliary library. Superfluous. Whatever the word for it was, Chuck had always felt kind of at home here.

Plus, it was empty, and quiet. The shelves were crammed close together, giving it a cramped feeling. He could finally breathe again.

When his pocket buzzed, he braced himself, expecting that Sarah had made it back to the game and was now furious that he hadn’t listened to her.

It was Ellie’s face on the view-screen.

“Hey, sis,” he said, keeping his voice low only because it was a library. It wasn’t like anybody was around to hear him, but some habits died hard. “What’s up?”

Football game noise flooded in when she answered. “Where are you?”

“Uh…”

“Are you coming back to the game?” Ellie went on, ignoring his non-answer.

“I…” Chuck trailed off. He didn’t want to lie to his sister, but he couldn’t really say whether or not he would physically be able to go back into the stadium, and he had no idea how long it would take for Casey and Sarah to finish cleaning up in the library so that Sarah could make him. “I don’t know.”

“Why not?” Ellie sounded suspicious, which wasn’t an abnormal setting for her these days. “Is Sarah with you?”

Now he would have to lie, or else confess that his “office manager” was currently cable-tying unconscious thugs in the library across campus. “Uh, she ran into some old friends from Harvard and they went for coffee. I told her I’d make the excuses for you.”

“Okay, so if Sarah’s not with you, where are _you_ , then?”

Chuck looked around at the tall, crowded shelves around him, lit only dimly because the Auxiliary Library always had terrible lighting. “I’m…in the library,” he finally confessed. “I’m kind of hiding out.”

“Which one?”

“What?”

“Which library are you in? I’ll come hang out with you.” The noise level on Ellie’s end of the line grew—somebody had either scored a touch down or a first down, apparently. “I’m kind of footballed out, it’d be a nice break.”

Chuck squinted at the shelf in front of him, as though he could see his sister through some magical scrying pool located there. Had she somehow picked up on the fact that he couldn’t go back to the game? She’d always been the savior type, whether it was taking the blame for the time Chuck disassembled the vacuum cleaner or taking over the parenting duties when their father had vanished. Was she rescuing him again?

Probably. He was too tired to mind.

So he gave her directions. They hung up, Ellie promising she would be there within fifteen minutes. Chuck pocketed his phone and headed up to the second level, where there weren’t any cameras. He moved by instinct toward the back right-hand corner. There’d been a sagging comfortable chair there back when he was a student, excellent for napping between classes.

It was still there. Chuck felt a little spurt of happiness.

He bypassed the chair, heading instead of the shelf to its right. He could only hope they hadn’t rearranged the shelves in the past five years…

They hadn’t. The catch was still there. Chuck twisted it, glanced around to make sure he was truly alone, and knocked his elbow covertly against the shelf, just once. The trapdoor opened easily.

He’d modeled his dumpsite just like Bryce’s, a little drawer that could hold quite a bit when it needed to, and virtually undetectable. One just had to know exactly where it was. He hoped that Professor Fleming hadn’t messed with it.

The two things he’d left inside had been untouched by everything except dust. Reverently, he pulled out the first item. His back-up deck for Magic the Gathering, perfectly aligned to fight any foe, large or small. He’d spent hours selecting just the right mix. It even felt familiar as he paged through, smiling as each card brought on memories of some of the epic tournaments he and Bryce had participated in. 

The second item was a lot smaller and held ten times the emotional punch. He pulled it out and squinted, rubbing the dust off on the hem of his shirt. It was smaller than he remembered, just a little twist of metal. He’d intended to use it five years before, before he’d shipped off to OCS, but the right situation had never come up.

And now, Chuck thought, it never would.

He tucked the ring in his pocket when he heard footsteps, double-checking to make sure the trapdoor was closed. Ellie came around the corner to find him sprawled over the chair.

“Should have known I’d find my little brother hanging out in the library on a Saturday night with a deck of cards,” she said, smiling a little.

Chuck shifted his legs so that she could sit on the arm of the chair. “I just love the smell of dusty books. And magic.” He waggled the cards. 

“Good to know some things never change.”

“Who’s winning?” Chuck asked, flipping to the next card.

“Stanford.”

Chuck blinked. “What? That can’t be right.”

“Yeah, Devon’s a little put out by it.” Ellie ruffled his hair. She and Sarah were probably the only ones on the planet that could get away with that without him flinching. “But your alma mater is on fire today, so there’s not much he can do about it.”

“I’ll have to buy him a beer,” Chuck mused. “And rub it in his face.”

Ellie let that go with a smile. “Chuck…”

Chuck glanced up. That was his sister’s serious voice, the one she’d used to break the news to him first that their mother had left, then their father. She had something on her mind. 

“What’s up?” he asked, purposely keeping his voice casual. Inwardly, he tensed.

“You didn’t leave the football game because you wanted to show Sarah around campus, did you?”

Ellie kept her eyes level on his, making it impossible to look away. Chuck stared back, frantically hoping that his poker face was coming along. He’d out-bluffed the government in Athens with that code and video file, but the government had nothing on Ellie Bartowski. There was no way in hell he could tell her that he had been running a mission to retrieve intel stupidly left around by his old CIA recruiter. So once again, he would have to lie to his sister. “El…”

“You left,” Ellie said, her gaze steady, “because you were having a panic attack and Sarah noticed it.”

It hadn’t been a panic attack so much as his entire body threatening to shut down on him. He thought he’d hidden it pretty well. Who had he been kidding? Ellie and Awesome were doctors, trained to notice details about reactions in case their patients couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to them. Even the most unobservant person could see the nice coat of sweat he put on to go outside. 

“Look, I know you can’t tell me anything about what you do now, or what the government did to you to give you PTSD. There are days where I’m just so happy to have you back that I don’t care that I can’t know. But there is one thing I do feel like you owe me to stop lying about.”

Oh, God. She knew. She somehow knew that Chuck had faced down a crossbow-toting Icelandic spy in the library. And now she was going to kill him for going near anything dangerous.

“About Sarah,” Ellie went on.

Chuck blinked. “What?” 

Ellie regarded him steadily, her look one that Chuck knew well. This Ellie would not accept a lie, a half-truth, or an evasion. This was an Ellie that Chuck remembered well. This was also an Ellie that Chuck was powerless against.

“So,” she said, “what branch of the government does Sarah work for, Chuck?”

Oh, crap.


	21. Tap-Dancing Through a Minefield

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confidence…thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live. — _Franklin Delano Roosevelt_

**10 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**AUXILIARY LIBRARY**   
**21:07 PST**

“You said what now?” Chuck asked, though he’d heard his sister perfectly. Too perfectly. As in, there was no way in hell he could have misunderstood her question, since it had been asked at regular volume in an empty corner of an empty library.

At that moment in history, he would have given his left foot for anything to get him out of this conversation. A phone call telling him that the president needed him to flash on something. Magnus skewering him with a crossbow. Sarah appearing from around a corner and brightly announcing that it was time for them to go, big things to do at the office tomorrow. An excuse. A hole in the floor. A time machine.

None of those things happened. Instead, Ellie gazed at him levelly, her expression unchanged. She summed up his own thoughts by saying, “You heard me. Now answer the question.”

“Ellie, I really—”

“Before you tell me that you can’t tell me,” Ellie said, holding up a finger. “I want to point out that I invited this woman into my home. Into my _home_ , Chuck. She’s been a part of my life, she’s gone to parties with me, she’s met all of my friends. If she’s been lying to me from the beginning, I deserve to know about it.”

She didn’t add “And kick her to the curb,” but her tone did.

“Are you crazy?” Chuck asked when he rediscovered his voice. “Sarah’s just your roommate and my office—”

“Oh, come on.” Ellie poked him in the arm. “Don’t insult me.”

“Ellie, I’m not—”

“She arrived a week before you came back from the dead. She always seems to know my schedule. And even though she’s got the world’s scariest memory for where everything is in the apartment, she just happens to mix up the name of the computer guy she’s got her big job interview with—Kowalski instead of Bartowski, which is her roommate’s name?” Ellie rolled her eyes. “And let’s not even forget the fact that you obviously knew her right away that first night.”

“Obviously?” Chuck felt the first stab of insult. He thought he’d put up a pretty good show when Ellie had first introduced him to Sarah as her roommate.

“Oh, probably not to anybody else.” Ellie rolled her eyes. “But come on, Chuck, how long have I been your big sister?”

“A long time.”

“A long time,” Ellie echoed. “And I know how you act around pretty girls when you meet them for the first time.”

“Maybe I just didn’t notice she was pretty,” Chuck argued, feeling stupid.

Ellie gave him a look: get real. 

“Everybody has different standards for physical beauty, you know. She could just be not my type.”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “Sarah came to visit me at work and my gay nurse friend commented that she was so pretty that he’d go straight for her. My straight nurse friend agreed she’d probably go gay. You know just as well as everybody else on the planet that she’s beautiful, so just answer my question.”

He wanted to. Like nothing else did he want to just sit and start spilling, telling her about everything that had happened, that was happening. With their parents so busy all of the time, they’d had to learn to rely upon each other as children. At one point in his life, he had been able to tell Ellie everything. Now, the knowledge of everything that he wasn’t allowed to tell her sat on his chest, a crushing weight, every time they even talked on the phone.

His mouth worked now. No sound came out.

Ellie sighed and looked away, into the shelves. Her disappointment struck him like a fist. “I thought so. Tell your government buddy that she has twenty-four hours to get her stuff out of my place, and I’ll pay her back for the rest of the rent for the month. I don’t need the government watching my every move.” She rose to go.

Chuck surged forward and grabbed her wrist before she could leave. “Ellie, Ellie, wait. That would be a bad idea.”

“Why?”

He couldn’t lie to his sister. Ellie had been through enough. She’d lost her parents, her brother, all without any explanation. All at once, Chuck felt a fury build up, so hot and intense that he could practically taste it. His free hand clenched into a fist.

They had no right to tell him what he could and couldn’t say.

He was a government worker. He had to follow orders. But it was _Ellie_. And that right there made up his mind for him.

“Wait here,” he said, his decision made. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”

“Chuck—”

“Less than a minute, I promise.” He released Ellie’s wrist and hurried away, pulling out his wallet. The Velcro ripping sounded like an explosion in the silent library, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He removed three small, flat pieces of plastic from the hidden compartment and fiddled with two of them as he walked. Setting them up on either side of the stairwell was easy, lining them up was a bit trickier. He’d almost completed assembling the speaker out of the third piece of his perimeter gear when he made it back to Ellie. 

She’d taken a seat as he’d requested, but not on the chair. Instead, she sat on the floor, apparently heedless of what the dust in this library could do to her jeans. Her back rested against the bookshelf so that she could look out the small window at the sky.

Without a word, Chuck sat next to her. He clipped the perimeter receiver to his belt loop and pulled out a flat, round circle. It wasn’t large, just bigger than his thumbnail, and it fit perfectly over his watch face.

Ellie looked away from the night sky. “What’s that?” 

“White noise generator.” Chuck adjusted it over his watch.

“And the…” Ellie poked the perimeter receiver. “Whatever that is?”

“I set up something to alert me if somebody comes up here.”

Ellie goggled. “Chuck, what the hell—”

But he just shook his head. “What I’m about to tell you is…well, they’ll throw me in prison for it, and I’m already under suspicion, so better safe than sorry.”

“Better safe than—”

“And I can’t tell you everything,” Chuck barreled on. If she kept interrupting him, or he thought about everything too much, about how much trouble he could get Sarah and Casey into, about what the knowledge would do to Ellie… He hurried onward. “Some of it’s not mine to tell, and there are other people that could get into trouble, people that I…that I care about, even if some of them are scary.” He specifically avoided bringing Casey’s face to mind. “So whatever I tell you, it has to stay here, okay? Right here in this room, and you can’t talk to me about it over the phone, or in person unless I specifically tell you it’s okay, okay?”

He could see the wheels working in his sister’s head even as she stared at him, her eyebrows drawn close together and her mouth slightly open. “You’re scaring me,” she finally said.

Chuck winced. “I’m sorry.”

“You make it sound like you’re a super-secret spy or something,” Ellie said, her eyebrows lowering. She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to deny it.

Chuck didn’t say anything.

“Oh, my God,” Ellie breathed. “You are, aren’t you?”

He remained still. It was easier to let her draw her own conclusions rather than confirm or deny. Right now, neither of them had technically done anything wrong.

“I mean, I knew you were doing something for the government. I just thought that they had you in a think tank and put into seclusion or something like that.”

“A think tank?” Chuck wrinkled his nose.

“It made more sense in my head.” Ellie pushed her hands through her hair, something she usually only did when flustered. “I mean, you’ve always been brilliant and creative, and kind of annoying with the way none of our household appliances were ever safe but—a _spy_ , Chuck? With danger and—and _guns_ and…” She trailed off and simply gaped.

Okay, maybe he should start talking. “No,” he lied, trying not to think about Triad, Peyman Alahi, Carina, defusing a bomb, or taking on a guy with a crossbow. “No, Ellie, I’m a spy because of what’s in my head. Which I can’t tell you about, so please don’t ask.”

His sister’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a few seconds. Finally, she shook her head, as if in a daze, and stared at him. “ _How_?”

“How did this all happen?” Chuck leaned back against the bookshelf and looked away, out the window. “They recruited me from Stanford, my last semester there. And I went along with it because I was hoping to make a difference in the world, like you were doing with medical school. I didn’t expect what happened to happen and trust me when I say that, if I could go back now and change it, I would.” He stared at his hands. 

“Who? Who recruited you?”

“The CIA.” 

“The…” Ellie trailed off and rubbed her fingers down her jaw-line, her eyes wide. “The CIA? The Central Intelligence Agency?”

“Not the Culinary Institute of America, no,” Chuck said, a small smile twisting up one corner of his mouth. “I know. That was my first reaction, too.”

“You’ve been a CIA agent for—for this whole time? All five years?”

Chuck nodded. “Joined up right out of Stanford, yes. I’m still working for them.”

“Doing _what_?”

“Data analysis.” Well, more data filtering these days, as his job, on paper, was pretty much to watch a “data-dump” and report any flashes to either Sarah or Casey. But he licked his lips and said, “And I code. Really, I’m just a glorified code monkey for the government, that’s all.”

“So, if you’re just a code monkey, as you say, why the hell do I have a—is Sarah CIA, too?”

Chuck just nodded. CIA, he thought, and very likely to karate chop him into many, many pieces and disperse with them where nobody would ever find him.

“So why do I have a CIA agent for a roommate?”

“She’s there to protect you.” Though, Chuck thought with an inward wince, she probably wouldn’t be there for long. After all, there was no point in having Operation Prometheus if the Prometheus portion was murdered by his CIA teammate.

He’d also said the wrong thing, judging by the way Ellie’s eyes widened. “Why the hell would I need protection?”

“Uh, yeah, about that…”

Chuck…” Ellie’s tone held a warning note. If he lied, he imagined that he’d very quickly learn just how well she’d done on her surgical rotations.

Chuck sighed. “About a month and a half ago, something happened—a game-changer, you could say. They’d been keeping me in deep seclusion because I was working with some pretty sensitive stuff, but a building was destroyed—” The blood drained out of Ellie’s face, and Chuck held both hands up to reassure her. “I wasn’t anywhere near it, I promise. I was half a world away. But some intel in that building was, um, outsourced. It was…sent to me through some very questionable means.”

“What?”

“I helped B—the guy who sent it—I helped him plan the operation. Without knowing it, of course. But I’m under a lot of suspicion right now, which is the reason for all of…” He waved a hand at his watch and the white noise generator. “And it probably didn’t help that Sarah and I went rogue.”

“ _What_?”

“It’s a long story—”

“Rogue? What? You’re—Sarah’s a rogue spy?”

“What? No!” Chuck stared at Ellie as though she’d suddenly started speaking Swahili. “No. She wouldn’t do that. Not Sarah.”

“You just said that you and Sarah went rogue—”

“Oh, right. Well, like I also said, it’s a long story. She only went off the grid to protect m—the intel.”

“Must have been some intel.” Ellie leaned back against the bookshelf and folded her arms over her chest. 

Chuck had to laugh a little, though there was no humor in the noise. “Trust me, it is. And because I have it and they don’t, I finally had some leverage. Sarah came and got me out of where they were keeping me, and we went on the run together.” He described what he could, keeping the details vague, though he was sure quite a few of them slipped in his excitement of finally being able to tell Ellie—or anybody at all really—about some of the adventures he and Sarah had had on the run. By the time he finished up his tale, Ellie was visibly gaping.

“You really did all of that?”

“It was all Sarah,” Chuck said. “You have no idea. She’s so awesome, it’s just amazing to see her in action. She really shouldn’t be here or in Burbank or anything. She should be out, taking out the bad guys.”

“If she’s as great as you claim,” and there was a healthy dollop of sisterly doubt in Ellie’s voice, “why is she, then? In Burbank, I mean?” Her tone added: and living with me?

Chuck scrubbed his hands over his face. “Because of the leverage.”

I don’t understand.”

“I may have bluffed the government with the intel I have.” Chuck gave her a sheepish look at her disbelieving stare. “She went off the grid for me and they can’t do anything to me because of the intel, but she was kind of expendable in their eyes.”

“ _Expendable_?” Ellie gaped.

“Uh, ha. No, not like that.” Though it was exactly like that. Chuck felt a thin trickle of sweat slide right between his shoulder blades. “You know, uh, fired. Dishonorable discharge. But don’t worry, nothing came of it. I bluffed, and they were afraid to call it. I got a representative—her name’s Gwen, and I think you’d love her—and she helped me call some of the shots.”

“Gwen? Is she CIA, too?”

“No, FBI.” Chuck had to smile. “Ellie, she’s like a you twenty, twenty-five years down the road. I told her my story and she walked right up to my bosses and started making demands on my behalf. And they’re clearly terrified of her. She says jump, you not only ask how high, but where to land and what would she like you to do next, too.”

Though he could see the shock and the surprise working through Ellie’s system, she mustered up a small smile for him. “I think you’re right. I like her already.”

“She’s the reason I got the operation set up in Burbank at all.” Chuck began flipping through the Magic deck, idle movements of his fingers.

“I still don’t understand how any of that has anything to do with Sarah living with me and lying to me about who she is.”

“Orders, I expect.” Chuck sighed. “When I demanded the operation be set up in Burbank, I also requested that they furnish protection for you. They’ve even got an agent that checks up on Morgan. I didn’t specify that it had to be Sarah, as I figured she’d be off in some war zone doing…whatever it is she does. Trust me, when I came in and found out that she’d been installed as your roommate, I was, well, to put it honestly, I was shocked as hell. But happy, too. She’s one of the best, Ellie, she really is.”

“You could have told me who she was from the beginning, you know.”

“If she’s one of the best, why isn’t she living with you, protecting you?” Ellie poked him in the shoulder. “If this intel is as important as you say it is…”

“I’ve got a roommate-slash-bodyguard, don’t worry.” Chuck half-smiled. “He’s big, and he grunts a lot, and he’s nowhere near as pretty as Sarah, but he’s actually halfway decent. I didn’t think so at first.”

Ellie squinted and poked him in the shoulder again. “I thought you said Sarah wasn’t your type, Chuck.”

“Oh, c’mon, sis.” Chuck gave her a look. “I’m breathing.”

“It’s a fair point,” Ellie said. “But if she’s—” 

The jangling of her cell phone made both of them jolt. Ellie laughed a little and put her hand over her heart as she pulled it out of her purse with her free hand. “It’s Devon,” she told Chuck. “Should I—”

“Go ahead and answer. Just don’t tell him anything about all of this,” and Chuck waved a finger in the air to indicate the general area and their conversation, “over a phone line, okay?”

“Okay.” Though she smiled, Chuck could see that Ellie’s hands were shaking slightly as she answered the phone. “Hey, babe. What’s up? No, no, just hanging out with Chuck. He’s showing me some of his old haunts on campus, and we’re waiting for Sarah to get…really?” Her face scrunched up in confusion. “But I thought you said that Todd was the attending on tomorrow’s…oh. Well, what time do you need to be there? Mm, okay. Yes, I guess we’d better get moving. Can you get the car and pick us up? That’ll probably be faster. We’re in front of…” She glanced at Chuck for confirmation.

“The Auxiliary library,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s…actually, I’m not sure. Here, I’ll just hand you over to Chuck and he can give you directions.”

“Ellie, we’re in a library,” Chuck said, glancing around and automatically lowering his voice. 

“As your little sensor thingie pointed out, we’re alone up here, nobody’s going to care if you talk on the phone.” Ellie rolled her eyes as she gave him the phone.

She had a point. A minute later, Chuck hung up the phone and handed it back. “He says to give him ten minutes, but it’ll probably be closer to fifteen.” He started to push himself to his feet, but Ellie grabbed his forearm before he could. He froze. “What? What is it?”

“Chuck…” She swallowed hard. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

Chuck waited, warily. He knew that look well. Ellie was building up to something, and in these situations, it had always been better to just wait her out. The best way to get a Bartowski to talk, after all, was silence.

Well, silence, the threat of torture, holding Sarah at gunpoint, probably all manners of truth serum, and asking an outright question.

Face it, Chuck told himself. Bartowskis just talk too damn much. 

“But?” he prompted when it looked like Ellie might take awhile to screw up the courage.

“But what if it happens again?” 

Chuck blinked. “What if what happens again? Me joining the CIA? Pretty sure that’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, sis.”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean, I always knew you worked for the government, I just thought it was some sort of research, a think tank thing. I never imagined that you were a spy, or that you were working with something so sensitive, they put you in seclusion.” Ellie looked troubled by that, but at least the tears in her eyes were still unshed. He’d feel like a grade-A creep if he made his sister cry in the middle of a library. “What if it happens again? What if they take you away again, and don’t tell me anything?”

Chuck opened his mouth to say, “They won’t,” but stopped. It was more than a possibility, he knew. Now that he was actually out of that godforsaken bunker, he could see the logic behind throwing him in another one. He was carrying around all of the government’s intelligence secrets in his cranium, protected by only two agents. He hadn’t had any torture resistance training. Hell, he’d failed Officer Candidate School.

It was frightening, when he thought about it too much.

“I can’t say that it won’t happen,” he said, pushing those thoughts away. He sagged back against the bookshelf and made sure to meet his sister’s eyes. “I can’t promise anything because, well…they’re the government of the United Freaking States of America. But I’ve got people on my side that care about me, that don’t want me to go back into the—into seclusion. I know I talk about Sarah a lot like she’s unstoppable, but I’m not exaggerating. She’s tougher than nails, and for some reason, she seems to think I’m important enough to have a real life. Trust me, it would take a few tanks to take her down once she’s got her mind set on something. And I’ve got Gwen in my corner, too. And even Casey, even if he’ll never admit it. I think the big guy secretly likes me. Well, hates me less, at any rate. And I’ve always got you.”

And then it happened. A solitary tear made its way down Ellie’s cheek. Inwardly, Chuck winced. “Please, please don’t cry. I’m fine. I’m not going anywhere. And hey, if I do…” An idea struck him, and he surged to his feet. “C’mon, you have to see this.”

“See what?” Wiping her face, Ellie allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.

Chuck tugged until they were both standing by the dumpsite. “Here,” he said, grabbing Ellie’s hand and putting it against the catch. “Feel that, right there? I set this drawer up when I was a student, as a way to pass messages to my old professor. Sarah and Casey don’t even know about this. Only two people do, and one of them is in critical condition.”

Ellie gave him an alarmed look.

“I was nowhere near him when it happened, I promise,” Chuck said quickly.

Ellie sneezed a little as she opened the catch. “It’s empty.”

“Yeah, I cleaned it out already. But if I have to leave and I can’t tell you, what I’ll do is I’ll leave you something…”

“A note?”

“No, it needs to be some kind of code…” Hoping to find inspiration, Chuck patted his pockets, ignoring the intel disk. He came up with only the promise ring, which he stuffed away before Ellie could see it, and his old Magic: the Gathering deck. He thumbed through it. “Here. This. If I vanish without a trace, I want you to come here, check this drawer. If you find the Prodigal Sorcerer card inside, it means that I went willingly, and that I’m coming back. If it’s empty, I want you to contact Gwen Davenport with the FBI. She’ll know what to do.”

“And what if she’s in on it?” Ellie asked, looking truly afraid for the first time.

Chuck had to admire the paranoia, even if it hurt his heart. “Then try and find Sarah, and hope she’s had her spinach because she’ll have some ass to kick.”

“And what if _she’s_ in on it, Chuck?”

“Then you probably wouldn’t be able to find her.” Chuck shrugged. “But in all seriousness, Ellie, she’s Sarah. I trust her. She saved me, and she’s continued to go to the wall for me, even though I’m this constant drag.”

“I highly doubt that you’re a drag, Chuck.” Ellie turned away to close up the dumpsite.

“Really? Ask Sarah about the time I hit her with a tranq dart sometime, then.”

Ellie whirled, her eyes widening in panic. “Why on earth would you ever have a tranquilizer gun?”

“Uh…training mission.” Chuck held up both hands when that did absolutely nothing to mollify his sister. He scrambled to think up a convincing lie because no way in hell was he telling Ellie that he had willingly gone within a thousand miles of an armed bomb. “I’m seriously just an analyst, but Washington wants us to keep up to date with training, and Sarah was teaching me, and I accidentally tranqed her. But I bought her flowers after!”

“Flowers?” Ellie frowned.

“Well, yeah, I wasn’t sure exactly what to get a girl after you knock her out with a tranq dart. I mean, I know I’ve had some dating disasters in my past, but even that’s a bit beyond the reach of ‘Duck, It’s Bartowski!’ So I figured flowers were safe.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And anyway, we should probably go outside and wait for Awesome. And I have to call Sarah and see if she’s finished up with the—the old classmate.” 

Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “And if she isn’t?”

“Then I’ll stay up here with her and we’ll drive back down together.” Chuck shrugged. “I’m supposed to stay within a twenty mile radius of her or my other partner.”

It spoke volumes of his sister’s mental state that she just accepted that with a nod. She bit her lip and glanced around the library. Thinking mode had begun, Chuck saw. “What should I tell her? I mean, you said this conversation has to stay here, but…I’m not that good of an actress, Chuck. She’s going to suspect something is up.”

“Do you think you could keep up an act until we get back to Burbank?” Chuck cringed at the look Ellie gave him. “I know it’s a lot to ask, especially since we’ll be in the car for six or seven hours. But I’ll talk to her, explain the situation the instant we get back. She’ll probably even be relieved that you know.”

If, he amended silently, she didn’t simply kill him with an icy look like he suspected she might.

Ellie seemed to read his thoughts on that one. She gave him a droll look.

“Eventually,” Chuck said. “Eventually she’ll be relieved. C’mon, let’s head out.”

He took the white noise generator off of his watch, and deactivated the perimeter sensors as they headed downstairs. They were still the only ones in the library, except for the single bored woman working at the front desk, evidently. She didn’t even look up from her magazine as they left.

**10 NOVEMBER 2007  
IN FRONT OF THE LIBRARY**   
**21:47 PST**

Chuck hung up his phone and frowned, which made Ellie glance over. They were shivering a little, as the temperature was much cooler at Stanford than Burbank. The fact that they were sitting on the marble staircase leading up to the Auxiliary Library didn’t help matters, either. A nearby street lamp washed their world with orange light. “What did Sarah have to say?”

“Stall,” Chuck said, tucking the phone back into his pocket. “She’ll be here in ten minutes or so. The classmate must have talked a lot, or something.” The last bit was said a bit lamely.

“It’s probably going to take Devon a long time to get to the car. We parked pretty far away because I made us so late, so she’ll probably beat him here.”

“We can only hope.” Except that Chuck wanted to push Sarah’s arrival off for as long as he possibly could. And maybe stop by the van to pick up a few Kevlar vests, maybe a full bomb suit, and cookies. They might mollify Sarah somewhat, as she had shown a partiality to chocolate, but mostly, he was just hungry. It had been awhile since the pretzel at the game. “How, uh, how was the game going?”

Ellie turned toward him, her eyes bulging. 

“Well, it’s not like we can talk about anything else,” Chuck pointed out. “So, sis, how was the game?”

Ellie folded one arm over her chest and held a hand out by her face, fingers spread. It was her flustered stance, one he had usually seen only when a big decision needed to be made, or something had gone wrong. “Chuck, I need time to process all of this.” Ellie pushed the back of her hand against her mouth, again something she only did when distressed or upset. Or, Chuck knew, just deep in perplexed thought. “I don’t think I can make idle chitchat right now, so do you think—oh, my God.”

Chuck started to reach for the tranq gun still in his waistband before he thought better of it. “What?” He glanced around, searching for danger, for Magnus, for anything. They weren’t the only ones on the street—people were strolling along both sides, enjoying a pleasantly cool Saturday night on Stanford’s campus—but he didn’t immediately see any threat nearby in any of them until his eyes locked on a lone figure walking toward them, hands in his pockets.

Chuck froze. 

Ellie didn’t. “Bryce? Bryce Larkin?”

The figure paused and squinted. Even from this distance, Chuck could see the clear blue eyes, though they were shaded from the streetlight by the brim of a Stanford cap. “Ellie Bartowski?” Bryce demanded in a shocked voice. He strode forward and pretended to notice Chuck for the first time. Chuck knew better. “And Chuck! The famous Chuck Bartowski! I can’t believe it.”

Chuck stayed absolutely still as Ellie gave Bryce a hug. What should he do? His insides had frozen, a coat of frost working its way over everything, making movement impossible. He needed to call Sarah. He needed to stop Bryce. He needed to know why Bryce had done it. He needed to not close his eyes—

He blinked. And as he did so, Peyman’s guard from the warehouse fell to the ground, lifeblood leaking.

The frost turned to nausea.

“C’mere, you!” Bryce, still jovial though Chuck could see evident exhaustion in his ex-friend’s pallor, grabbed him in a bear hug. “How long has it been, huh?”

“Si-since Stanford at least,” Chuck lied. He could feel the damnable coat of sweat beginning to sprout. What the hell? Could Bryce do this? Could he just walk out into public and start having conversations with CIA agents?

Apparently.

“Far too long!” Bryce grinned. “Heard you were back stateside, but I didn’t expect to see you here. I thought you hated football.”

“What are you doing here, Bryce?” Chuck said between his teeth, willing Ellie to get a phone call, something, anything to drag her away from the conversation so that he could pull the tranq gun and bring Bryce in. The universe, however, didn’t get his message. Ellie’s cell phone remained silent.

Bryce seemed to know what he was thinking, if the broadening grin was anything to go off of. “It’s the big game, Chuck. Like I’m going to miss that. And I thought I’d drop by, maybe see some of the old haunts while I was here. Talk to some old professors, maybe.”

Oh, God, Chuck thought. He knows about Fleming and the intel disk.

What the hell was he supposed to do now? He couldn’t do anything and blow that part of his cover with Ellie. Why the hell had he been so reluctant to tell her that Bryce was part of the spy game, too? That would have solved all of his problems right now. He could probably just draw the gun and try to hold his friend off until Sarah arrived, but he couldn’t see that ending well for anybody.

Sarah. Oh.

Chuck’s hand crept toward his pocket. If he could just get a message off to Sarah…

Bryce spotted the movement. An imperceptible shake of the head, a shift of one hand toward his waist. Of course, Bryce’s cheerful mask for Ellie didn’t slip an inch even through the threats. He looked wholly captivated with their conversation—idle chitchat, as Ellie would have put it—while Chuck stood silently by and tried not to freak out. Sarah, he thought, unable to move without Bryce blowing both of their covers, Sarah, hurry.

Finally, Bryce gave Ellie an apologetic smile. “Could I steal your brother for a minute? Stanford secrets, you know.”

“Oh, sure. Right.” Ellie grinned and gave Bryce another hug. “It was great running into you again, Bryce. Chuck, Devon will be here in a few minutes. I’ll keep an eye out for Sarah.”

Chuck winced inwardly. There went his ace in the hole. Indeed, Bryce’s body language stiffened just a hair.

“Sarah’s here?” he asked once he’d dragged Chuck out of Ellie’s sight, back into an alley between the library and the science building next door. “How long?”

“To?” If he could play dumb, keep Bryce talking, maybe Sarah would suddenly develop mind-reading abilities and flight. And she could break land-speed records and show up and save the day.

“Don’t,” Bryce warned. Now that Ellie was out of sight, the friendly, charming persona had fallen away. All that was left was a tired edge of exhaustion. “Let’s just keep this simple, okay? I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m here for the disk.”

Chuck scoffed with a bravado he didn’t feel. “Yeah, like I’m going to hand over important intel to a traitor, Bryce. For all I know, you’re working with Magnus.”

The guy with the crossbow?” Bryce’s brow crinkled.

Said crossbow had almost separated Sarah’s head at the neck. “It’s scarier up in person.”

“I’m sure. The disk, Chuck.”

“What disk?”

“You already said you had important intel.” 

Damn it. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be on a disk. It could be a flash drive.”

“Well, fine. Hand over the flash drive, then.” 

Though the other agent hadn’t pulled a gun, Chuck knew firsthand just how deadly Bryce could be. He’d been the tech support of the Sarah and Bryce Ass-Kicking Squad for two years, he’d seen video surveillance of both the battles and the aftermath. But he also knew to be more afraid of Sarah and Casey than Bryce. He’d already done enough for the evening to piss Sarah off. “Seriously, Bryce, what part of ‘traitor’ is so hard to understand? Is it the part where you blew up government property, the part where you sent me government secrets, or the—”

“Chuck, I know what you’re doing,” Bryce said. “Quit stalling and give me the intel already.”

The disk sat in his pocket, light in weight but an anvil in implication. Chuck swallowed hard. “What’s on here, Bryce? What’s so important to you?”

“It’s something Fleming wanted me to have, not you. Otherwise he would have said White Hat.”

“Yeah, but only because he didn’t know ‘Black Coat’ actually meant ‘turncoat.’” Chuck wanted to cross his arms over his chest, but he knew better. Bryce was going to strike at any second. If he was tensed and ready, he had a very, very slim chance of being able to fight his friend off and get away.

“I was never a traitor, Chuck.”

Pull the other one, Chuck thought. “Again, what part’s the hard part? Blowing up—”

“It was a government sanctioned operation.”

Though that one made him want to stop and think, again, Chuck knew better. He remembered Sarah’s warnings about Bryce’s motives. Trusting his once-best-friend right now might be deadly. 

And it would very bad for Ellie to be the one to discover his body in an alley. 

So he scoffed. “To destroy their own database and send it to a nerd in the middle of Siberia? Nice try.” Chuck made a buzzing noise. “Game over, no lives left.”

“So I deviated from the plan a little.” Bryce shrugged and gave him a sincere look. “Come _on_ , Chuck. The disk. Now. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.”

“If you want this disk, you’re going to have to.” Chuck’s fists clenched. He and Bryce looked down at them in surprise. “And no, I don’t know where this bravery is coming from, either. I’d rather hide behind Casey or Sarah, trust me. But I’m not handing this disk over to a known traitor.”

For ten humming, heart-pounding seconds, Bryce just stared. There was a hint of sadness on his face, but he finally conceded with a nod. “Very well. I’m sorry.”

“For wh—” was all Chuck got out.

He never saw Bryce move. Just a blur of Stanford red and blue jeans where his friend had been an instant before, and then Chuck’s knees slammed into the concrete. Bryce twisted one arm behind his back, pressing a knee against his spine. 

It hurt. More than a little.

“Damn it,” Chuck muttered, flinching. “Can’t I make it through _one freaking day_ without getting injured in some way?”

“Sorry, buddy.” Bryce did sound genuinely regretful as he turned out Chuck’s pockets. Chuck saw a flash in the corner of his eye of the disk being pulled out, and thought: Casey is going to kill me and Sarah is going to help him dig the unmarked grave. “Didn’t want to hurt you.”

“That’s what you all say.” Chuck scowled. He grunted when Bryce increased the pressure on his back, sending him face-first into the concrete. “Ow! Geez, Bryce!”

“Sorry,” Bryce said again. “Stay down until I’m away. I don’t want to have to shoot you, but…”

Chuck sighed against the pavement. “Yeah, yeah, I get the message. Though you could do me a favor and shoot me now so that Sarah and Casey don’t have to do it later. Really, it’s the least you could do for your old partner alone.”

He heard Bryce’s footsteps still, and a quiet sigh.

“Why’d you do it?” Chuck asked. He kept his head down; he knew that tone of voice. Bryce had meant business about shooting him. “It makes no sense, Bryce. None of it ever did. You’re not a traitor, you’re Bryce Larkin of the Connecticut Larkins. You guys were here before this country was! You practically invented patriotism.”

Something grabbed the back of his T-shirt. Chuck yelped as he was hauled mercilessly to a sitting position against the wall. Bryce knelt in front of him, fury, exhaustion, and desperation all plain on his face. “Listen to me closely because I’m only going to say this once, Chuck. I’m not a traitor. Stealing the Intersect was a government-sanctioned mission. There’s a group, Fulcrum, they’re in all of the intelligent branches, and they’re dangerous. They approached me with the mission to steal the Intersect. By the time I found out what they were up to, it was already too late. So it was either steal the Intersect myself and send it to somebody I trust, or let them destroy it.”

Chuck felt each word punch through him. He wanted so badly to believe, but Sarah’s warnings sat heavy the front of his mind. Still, they couldn’t entirely eradicate hope. “Wh-why would they want to do that?”

“Because they have plans for the intel.” Bryce’s gaze remained steady. “They want to destroy it, and if they find out you’re the Intersect, they’ll take you.”

“How d-did you know that?”

“Tell Sarah she needs to change her passwords again.” Half of Bryce’s face pulled into a smile. Chuck’s fist clenched. “Don’t believe me? I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t believe me, either. But I did it for the good of everybody here. Just look up Operation Sand Wall when you get—”

That was all Chuck heard.

Filing cabinets—footage of a Cold War assassination—

OPERATION SAND WALL. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY 20605.

TOP SECRET. Documents. Automacity, Problem Solving, Decision Making, Mental Flexibility and Creativity. 

Nucleus-styled maps in quick succession.

Floor plans. OPERATION SAND WALL: INTERSECT.

Filing cabinets again.

“—Back.” Bryce frowned. “Are you okay?”

Chuck raised a shaking hand to his aching temple. Flashes hurt just a little bit more when he was tired. “You’re really not rogue.” It was said wonderingly, as if he couldn’t believe his own thoughts. He looked at his friend, and felt the first full spurts of hope ignite through his chest. 

“Did you—” Bryce’s eyebrows drew close together. “Did the Intersect really just tell you all of that? Damn, that was fast.”

Chuck ignored him. “You’re still one of the good guys,” he said.

He wasn’t expecting to see his friend look sad at that. “Yes,” Bryce said. “I’m still one of the good guys.” He rose abruptly to his feet. “But Sarah and Casey can’t know, Chuck.”

“What?” Chuck blinked away the last of the fog and started to scramble to his feet. Bryce held out a warning hand to stop him. “Why the hell not?”

“Because they might be Fulcrum. You can’t trust anybody anymore, Chuck. Keep your guard up, and watch your back.”

The thought of either Casey or Sarah possibly even being traitors floored him so much that Bryce was almost away before he regained his senses. “Wait!”

Bryce stopped, but didn’t turn. “Chuck, I have to go.”

“At least give me the disk back, so I can prove to Casey and Sarah that you’re not a traitor that way.”

Yet another sigh. Bryce still didn’t turn. “No, Chuck. Not happening.”

“Fine, then who’s Phillip Dartmoor?” The question came out before he even realized he was asking it, but it didn’t surprise him. The problem had sat at the back of his mind for nearly a month now. Bryce didn’t move to answer now, so Chuck scowled. “I know you left that name in my pocket, Bryce, and I’m confused as to why. I’m having no luck finding him. I’ve looked up every Phillip Dartmoor living on the planet, and I still don’t know why you left me his name.”

“Well, there’s your problem, Chuck. Phillip Dartmoor is dead.” Bryce vanished around the corner. 

Chuck stayed where he was, leaning against the brick wall of the library and staring into the dimness. The Operation Sand Wall information still continued to flash through his mind as his brain worked to categorize all of it into usable portions. He let the information wash over him. It didn’t matter as much as the rest of it all.

His best friend wasn’t a traitor.

It almost made the fact that Casey and Sarah were going to murder him for losing the disk a little less scary. Almost.

“Chuck?” Ellie’s voice drifted over the alley. “Devon’s here! Oh, and there’s Sarah!” She sounded nervous about the second prospect.

Yeah, Chuck thought as he rose to his feet, don’t blame you there, sis. 


	22. Talking Points

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. — _Plato_

**11 NOVEMBER 2007**   
_**CHEZ** _ **BARTOWSKI/WALKER**   
**04:39 PST**

It had been the world’s quietest car ride between Palo Alto and Burbank, Chuck thought. Normally, he wasn’t against playing road trip games, but Awesome needed to rest for the surgery, and the others had very considerately remained quiet. Sarah had even taken the middle seat so that Awesome could recline his chair back, which meant that for the entire ride, Chuck could feel her warmth against one side of his body. She spent the first hour of the silent drive obviously trying not to fall asleep, her head bobbing forward and popping back up immediately.

Kung fu was hard work, Chuck figured. He wasn’t surprised when Sarah’s head finally fell back against the seat behind her, though it did give him a few tense moments when she shifted in her sleep so that her head rested on his shoulder. He knew from their travels throughout Eastern Europe that she was a light sleeper, but not now, evidently. She just burrowed in and slept like the dead. When his arm started to fall asleep, he shifted and wrapped it around her. It grew a little too warm in the car, but he could deal with that.

Even while he feared what she would have to say once he confessed everything, he envied Sarah. He would have given anything to be able to turn his brain off, but so much had happened. Jill. The library chase. Taking out a bad guy with nothing but his fists. Ellie _knowing_. Ellie pretty much knew he’d been in a bunker, and she knew about Sarah, and what he was doing for the government. He wouldn’t have to lie to her as much. There were thousands of things to think about, millions of thing to wonder about now.

But the encounter with Bryce sat in the center of his mind and refused to let him think about anything else. So he went over the Operation Sand Wall documents in his head. They all seemed to point toward a human Intersect, which made sense. He had the very same thing in his head, after all. Except…the reports he’d hacked from his doctors in DC, the ones that had dealt with him as Patient X from behind curtains and other identity-hiding means, all of those reports had indicated surprise that the Intersect was so effective in a human subject.

If they’d designed the Intersect to be tested in human patients, why the hell were they so shocked that it had worked? He knew there was something to be said about government efficiency in that statement, but even that was a bit much.

And who was this Fulcrum group? What did they want? Chuck tried thinking the word as hard as he could, imagining it in his head, picturing every letter. He hoped to induce a flash as he had on the Santa Monica Pier, but the Intersect stayed silent. Unlike his brain. By the time they were anywhere near the Los Angeles area, Chuck had already worried the problem of Fulcrum and its mysterious lack of identity from four directions, and he had come up with nothing satisfactory.

So he puzzled over what he did know. Bryce didn’t want him to tell Sarah and Casey that he wasn’t a traitor because they might be Fulcrum. Which meant, Chuck thought, that Fulcrum could be anybody, if Bryce was willing to distrust his own partner, the woman who had been at his side through every scary situation the spy world offered. Fulcrum’s involvement with the government must be deep and widespread, indeed, and it sounded like Bryce knew what he was talking about. So should he listen to Bryce? 

True, he’d always followed Bryce’s lead at Stanford. Bryce, after all, had been right about rushing a fraternity, and he’d known the best clubs, the best place to get food at drunk o’clock in the morning, where all of the good local bands were playing. But there was a huge chasm of logic between trusting a guy because he knew how to make college great, and trusting the guy who said you couldn’t trust the partners that had saved your life time after time.

Maybe field operatives liked to work in a vacuum of information. Maybe they even liked all the doubt and double-talk. Chuck didn’t see how that was beneficial to anybody. And if Casey or Sarah were Fulcrum…

What the hell was he thinking? Was he really doubting his partners? He’d doubted Bryce, his best friend, but Bryce had blown up a government building, stolen secrets, and had vanished into the wind. A little bit of doubt was a hell of a lot more than justifiable in this situation.

Doubting Sarah and Casey wasn’t.

When they pulled into the parking lot of Ellie’s building in the predawn hours, his decision had been made. He shook out his legs and stretched out his back while Awesome and Ellie stumbled away, off to sleep. He put a hand on Sarah’s arm before she could follow. “Hey, you got a minute?”

He’d caught her mid-yawn. “Y-yeah. Can it wait a minute, though? It was a long drive and I have to…” She gestured toward the apartment and gave him a look that was the Sarah Walker equivalent of sheepish.

“Oh. Um, sure, take all the time you need. I’ll just wait over there.” Chuck nodded at the fountain.

It took her more than a minute. Chuck was left staring at the old crack in the pavement by the fountain for a good ten minutes or so before Sarah eased open her bedroom window and climbed out into the courtyard. She’d taken the time to throw on pajamas: a loose shirt and very short shorts so that her legs glowed a bit in the moonlight.

He looked away, staring hard at the crack in the pavement. Now was not the time to get distracted.

“What’s on your mind, Chuck?” Sarah asked, lowering herself to sit next to him on the edge of the fountain. He had to shift his eyes again to avoid staring at her thigh. “If you’re worried about how you did today, you don’t need to be. You led us right to the intel, and you handled yourself with the Magnus situation. It was good work.”

“That’s just the thing.” Chuck licked his lips, his throat suddenly dryer than Arrakis. “I didn’t.” He forced himself to look over—not at her legs, Bartowski!—and meet Sarah’s eyes. “I don’t have the disk.”

“What?” She jolted. Agent Walker took over; sleepy Sarah vanished. “What happened to it, Chuck?”

Chuck took a deep breath. “Well, while Ellie and I were waiting for Awes—for Devon to pick up the car, an old friend kind of showed up.”

“An old friend?”

“Bryce.”

Sarah said a very bad word. She was normally such a still person when not playing the ditz persona that her surging to her feet made Chuck tense. But Sarah only paced a few feet away and back. Chuck wrenched his eyes away from the flesh just below the hem of her T-shirt—well, his T-shirt, really, as she was back in the Stanford shirt from his days of yore—and watched her face carefully for clues about when his death might be coming.

“You gave important intel to a traitor, Chuck?” Sarah asked.

“Trust me.” Chuck thought of the new scrapes on his knees, and the matching ones on his palms. “Not willingly. He overpowered me, Sarah. I tried to stall as long as I could so that you could get there, I really did.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“So that you could do what? He’s Bryce Larkin, Sarah. He’s like Kurt Wagner. You can try to hold onto him, but he just vanishes.” Chuck pushed his aching hands through his hair. “And I couldn’t say anything in front of Ellie and Awesome.”

“You could have sent me a text message so that I could have made an excuse or sent Casey after him. He’s vanished back into the ether by now, and we’ll never find him.” Sarah scowled. “Also, for future reference, I can read lips. It’s one of my many talents.”

“I’m sure.” Chuck licked his lips again. “The thing is, I was letting him get away.”

The frenetic energy drained out of Sarah, slowly, dangerously. All movement ceased, so that she stood still as stone underneath the street light tinting the courtyard a soft yellow. Her eyes hardened. When she spoke, her voice was deceptively quiet. “Why would you do that, Chuck?”

He’d been more afraid in his life, but never of a woman, and never of a woman in so little clothing. Logically, he knew Sarah wouldn’t hurt him. She’d stopped hitting him altogether, and there’d been no repeats of the Acropolis Cold-Clock, but…

There was just too much potential for violence to be ignored.

Still, he felt himself shrug. And even though all of the moisture in his throat had vanished, he said, “Because he’s not a traitor, Sarah.”

“Chuck, just because you want something to happen doesn’t mean it’s—”

“Operation Sand Wall.”

Chuck watched her face carefully. She was an excellent spy, good at dissembling or diverting when she needed to. But her eyes had a hard time lying, especially to him. Relief flooded through them when he saw nothing but angry puzzlement now. She hadn’t been in on it; Bryce had been acting alone. Sarah hadn’t lied to him.

“What?” she asked now.

“It’s a Top Secret CIA mission, docket number 20605, proposing practical applications for the database system known as the Intersect. It’s also a detailed evacuation plan—essentially, it’s how to steal the Intersect.” Chuck looked away, staring into the darkness beyond the edges of the street light’s reach. He could call the documents to mind with just a thought, but he didn’t do so. He was too busy seeing his friend’s exhausted face. “Bryce was approached by a group named Fulcrum to steal the Intersect. By the time he realized that they weren’t exactly kosher, he was too far in. He sent the Intersect to me because, and this is all supposition here, so don’t quote me, being in the bunker, it was very likely I was the only one he thought he could trust.” Chuck’s smile turned bitter. “Not like much could reach me in the bunker.”

“I did,” Sarah said.

Chuck shrugged. “But you’re Sarah Walker.”

“Chuck, I’m not one of your comic book heroes.” Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. She let out a slow breath and turned away, but Chuck could see her hands shaking. “Everybody can be broken, and under the right circumstances, everybody can be a traitor.”

Chuck shook his head. “You’re not Fulcrum. You wouldn’t hide something like that from me.”

Sarah stayed quiet for so long that nerves started to jump through his midsection. Had she been lying to him? Was she indeed Fulcrum? Was that what Bryce had been worried about? 

But finally, she shook her head and met his eyes, squarely. “I’m not Fulcrum. I’ve never even heard of them,” she said at length. 

“Bryce asked me not to tell you or Casey about Operation Sand Wall.”

“You flashed on it? It’s a real operation?” Sarah asked, moving toward him. She hesitated before she sat next to him. She kept her voice too modulated to sound hopeful. He knew better. The shaking hands and the bright eyes alone told him otherwise. He could understand the feeling. He’d felt horrible at the thought of Bryce, his best friend, being a traitor, and Bryce had meant a lot more than that to Sarah. Personally or professionally, he still wasn’t sure, but that didn’t matter.

So he nodded and tapped his temple. “I flashed on all of it, and I think can find it now that I know the project name. I spent the drive home reviewing all of the documents. I’ll pull the hard copies off of the servers for you and Casey tomorrow—well, later today, really. And I want to start looking into this Fulcrum group. I think Bryce has been having a rough time with them, and if he’s in trouble, I want to help.”

“Of course you do.” Sarah pushed her fingertips against her eyelids. “Chuck Bartowski, saving the world, one broken spy at a time. We’re going to have to tell Casey, you know.”

“I know.” And frankly, the thought terrified him.

“And he’s going to be pissed about you losing the intel.”

“I know that, too.”

“Don’t be surprised if he tries to use you as a punching bag instead of Frank.”

“You’ll protect me, right?” Chuck deliberately batted the puppy dog eyes he’d always used to bribe cookies out of Ellie.

“From Casey?” Sarah scoffed. “You’re on your own there, bucko.”

“Bucko?”

“Shut up about the nicknames.” Sarah sobered abruptly. “Did Bryce say what he wanted with the intel? Is it about Fulcrum? Fleming’s still critical, so we can’t ask him what it is.”

Chuck shook his head. “He only said that Fleming wanted him to have it, was all. It could be anything from secret Stanford spy traditions to cheat codes for ‘Missile Command.’ Who knows?”

“I guess we won’t.” Sarah looked troubled, but she sighed and rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. Chuck could sympathize. Even with her nap on the way home, she had to be exhausted. Hell, he hadn’t even gone through a kung fu exhibition, and he could feel weariness dragging at his limbs. But Sarah didn’t complain. She just had him walk her through the entire encounter with Bryce, going over everything twice. 

When he had finished, she stayed quiet for a moment. “I’d like time to think about all of this, but we do have to let the others know. I’ll send a report to Casey and the Director and the General over the secure connection, and then we can both deal with the fall-out when they wake up. Why don’t you go inside and get a few hours’ sleep?”

“Thanks, but,” Chuck rose to his feet, “I’d rather head back to the Bachelor Pad, I think. Ellie’s couch gives me a crick in the neck.”

You wouldn’t have to—okay. You’ll be okay driving home?”

“It’s only a few blocks. I’ll be fine.”

“Before you go, let me see your watch.” Sarah held out a hand. When Chuck passed it over to her, she turned it and pointed at a small red button. “See this? This is called a panic button.”

“Sarah, I know what a—”

“The next time Bryce just happens to drop in on you, your job is simple. I don’t care if he’s a traitor or not. You see him, you press the damn button. The only time you are exempted from pressing said button is if all of your fingers have been cut off, and if that’s happened, I still expect you to try and use whatever nubs are left. Use your damn nose if you have to. Just push. The. Button. Do you understand me?”

When a woman had _that_ look in her eye, there was only one proper response. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” Sarah handed the watch back. “Now, go home, get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.” Chuck gave her a look. “Okay, later in the morning. Happy?”

“Very,” Chuck said.

“Good. Good night, Chuck.”

But as she turned to go back in through her window, Chuck remembered the other reason that could possibly make him a dead man. “Um, Sarah?”

She sighed. “Yes, Chuck?”

“Just one thing I didn’t tell you.”

Sarah’s head lolled back on her neck: tired exasperation. She was at the end of her rope, he knew. But he couldn’t leave until he fulfilled his promise to Ellie. “It can’t wait?”

“No, it can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Fine, but make it quick. I’m not sure how much more I can handle.” Sarah waved for him to get on with it.

“Um, so, I talked to Ellie today, and she asked me a question, and…” Another deep breath. His next words came out in a rush: “She knows I’m a CIA agent, but not about the Intersect or anything, just that I’ve got important intel and that Pacific Securities is really just a front.”

Sarah gaped.

“Oh, and she knows about you, too. Actually, that was how she figured it all out. I talked her down so that she won’t kick you out or anything, but maybe you could talk to her, smooth things over? She’s a really forgiving person, I promise, and once you come clean with her, too, you’ll probably get along famously.” Chuck gave her a panicked smile. “And anyway, that was all I wanted to say. Since you’re tired and all, there’ll be plenty of time to talk about it tomorrow, right? Good night, Sarah!”

And like the wise man that he was, he ran for it.

**12 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: UPSTAIRS**   
**10:12 PST**

“Just got off the horn with DC.” Casey propped his feet up on the corner of Chuck’s desk, one dirty boot-heel at a time. Each thud made Chuck’s organized soul flinch just a little, but he kept his face neutral. Ever since Casey had discovered his bordering-on-OCD ways of keeping his desk clean, it had been…well, it had been like Christmas come early for Casey. And since the burlier man was more than a little frustrated and pissed off at both of his CIA teammates…

Chuck foresaw a lot of cleaning muddy boot-prints off of his desk in the nearby future.

“Yeah?” he asked, keeping his attention focused on the ID photos he’d been browsing all morning. “What’d Washington have to say? Any more reveals on Sand Wall or are they still pointing fingers about who started it? Because let me tell you, nothing really gets my day going like the news that not a single higher-up knew about a major mission that took out an entire building and, oh yeah, has everything in the world to do with me and what’s in my head.”

“The news about the op just broke yesterday,” Casey said. “Washington always takes a little while to get their thumbs out of their collective asses.”

Chuck skipped forward to a new page of ID photos.

“Of course,” Casey said, going on, “we could probably know a hell of a lot more about Operation Sand Wall if you hadn’t let the primary source of knowledge get away without a trace.” He leaned forward, lightning quick, and smacked Chuck upside the back of the head.

Chuck jolted forward and scowled. “For the last time, Casey, there wasn’t—”

“You don’t know that.” Casey stabbed a finger at him. “The next time something like that happens, you are on your phone right away, calling me. I don’t care what time of the day it is, I don’t care who’s nearby. You call me. Need a code phrase? Tell me you need some friggin’ gelato. That can be a damned code phrase.”

“Gelato, Casey? Really?”

“Girly enough for you, Bartowski?” Casey crossed his arms over his chest and glared.

Chuck sighed. After arriving home from Stanford the day before, he’d slept for far too long and therefore hadn’t gotten a good rest that night. And his hands ached like nothing else, which only steeled his resolve that he was never taking up boxing. Let others kill their knuckles on other people’s faces. He’d stick to his morning Tai Chi and weight lifting routines—and running around the park when he could force himself to go outside. He wasn’t anywhere near Sarah’s pace, and probably wouldn’t be for years, but it was getting to the point where he didn’t want to die after the first half mile. No, that part came after the second half mile.

He saved his progress on the ID photos. “How many times am I going to have to apologize for this? I made a decision, yes, it was the wrong one, but we know Bryce isn’t a traitor now.”

“Suspect,” Casey said, glowering. “We _suspect_ Larkin isn’t a traitor. There’s no way to be sure. Well, there’s one way to be sure, but you let him get away.”

“So what you’re saying is: a lot. I’m going to have to apologize a lot.” Chuck rolled his eyes and, since Casey was doing it anyway, propped his own feet on the edge of his desk. “I’m sorry, Casey. I should have called you.”

“Next time, do so. I don’t care if your hands have been cut off and you have to dial with your nose.”

Chuck jolted at hearing Sarah’s words repeated from the NSA. “You know, they have a thing called voice dial—why am I even bringing that up? If my hands have been cut off, let’s be real, Casey, I’m going to be on the ground screaming like a little girl.”

Casey shrugged in a way that indicated the visual wasn’t entirely unpleasant to him.

“What did Washington want?” he asked.

“Your paperwork came through.” Casey reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded wad of paper, which he tossed in front of Chuck. “That’s your new dossier. It’s closer to your story than your first dossier was because this is a government-appointed shrink.”

“Wh-what?” Chuck unfolded the paper.

“Didn’t you know? Your rep’s appointed shrinks all bowed out on your case, so General Beckman stepped in. You’re meeting with Dr. Anton this afternoon. Unlike me, they’ll pay him to listen to you, so—what are you doing?” Casey frowned when Chuck abruptly put his feet on the floor and began to type.

“Googling him.”

“Why the hell are you doing that?”

“Because I really don’t want to walk into his office and meet _your_ long lost twin brother.” Chuck shook his head. “If that happens, I’m definitely going to need therapy.”

Deliberately, Casey leaned forward and flicked a fleck of mud off of his boot and onto Chuck’s desk. Right, Chuck thought, trying to ignore the speck, not anywhere near off the hook yet. Probably won’t be for a couple of years.

“Your appointment is at two. To ensure that you get there, I’ll be driving you.” Casey folded his arms across his chest. “And I’ll wait in the car until you’re done getting your kumbaya-yas out.”

“I can drive myself,” Chuck said.

“Don’t care. You’re under twenty-four hour protective detail until they get to the bottom of this Sand Wall thing.” Casey’s grin turned strangely feral. “Get used to having Walker and me breathing down your neck.”

“Where is Sarah, anyway? She’s usually in by this point.” Chuck glanced around his office, as though Sarah would have appeared out of the woodwork or beamed in from the Enterprise. He checked his watch to be sure. “Well, okay, she’s usually downstairs by now, trying to kill Frank.”

“DC.” 

The walls groaned and moved inward an inch. “W-what?” Chuck asked. “Sarah’s gone? When?”

“She took the Red-Eye out of LAX last night.”

“Why wasn’t I told about this?” 

“Because I’m telling you now.” 

Chuck swallowed hard. “How long’s she going to be in DC?”

“Relax, princess, she’s coming back on the evening flight, she’ll be in at eleven.” Casey rolled his eyes. “Should’ve known I’d be dealing with this when they said I’d be working with a couple of spooks. We’re leaving at one fifteen, so be ready to go.”

He strode out of Chuck’s office. Then, and only then, did Chuck reach for the cleaning supplies he kept in the bottom drawer. As he wiped the heel-prints away, he frowned. He hadn’t thought to ask Casey _why_ Sarah had gone to DC. It had only seemed to matter that she was gone at all. And losing that sort of objectivity was a bad thing, especially when he had two people relying on him to keep up his leg of the tripod. He’d have to do better in the future.

The walls shrank just a little more. Chuck ignored it by wondering what Sarah was doing in DC.

**12 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**THE CROWN VIC**   
**15:08 PST**

Chuck climbed into the front seat of the Crown Vic, closed the door, and sat silently. He didn’t bother to greet Casey. He merely pulled on his seat belt. In the driver’s seat, Casey put down his newspaper and grunted. He put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking garage.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked after five minutes had passed.

Chuck shrugged. In truth, there was really nothing to talk about. Gwen Davenport and the government wanted him to go to therapy, so he’d gone. And even though he wanted to get better…

“I didn’t talk to him,” he said.

Casey grunted. “What’s his secret?”

“What?”

“I personally can’t get you to shut up, so I want to know—what’s his secret?”

“Maybe I just like you less.” Chuck pushed his head back against the headrest and let it bob with the motion of the car. “Can we stop at a drive-thru? I’m starved.”

They pulled into the first one Casey passed. After they’d placed their order, and the car idled at the window, Casey sighed and rubbed his forehead. Chuck recognized the look well. He’d seen it several times. He called it the “Damn it, Bartowski’s making me have human feelings again” look. “Why didn’t you talk to the shrink?”

Chuck shrugged. “He’s a government appointed shrink. He’s just going to turn around and report everything I say to his higher-ups. If that’s their version of help, thanks but no thanks.”

Casey handed a twenty up to the delivery window and passed Chuck a bag of food with grease spots on it. Drinks followed. “You don’t think this guy can actually help?”

Chuck focused his attention on unwrapping straws for both of them, and poking them through the slots on the lids. “Not willing to try my luck and get burned,” he said without looking up. 

After a moment, Casey grunted. “Guess I can understand that.”

Casey pulled the car out of the drive-thru and into traffic. Since he’d left the radio off, silence reigned over the Crown Victoria. Finally, Chuck cleared his throat. “You’ve seen a lot, haven’t you, Casey?”

“A lot of what?”

“Um. You know.”

Casey glared at him. “No, I don’t know. What are you talking about?”

“Decorated soldier like you, you must have seen some pretty bad things over the years. Bad…stuff…” Chuck trailed off lamely and scrubbed his hands over his face. He really should take a nap soon, or he’d be no good to anybody. He’d never realized how exhausting watching a clock for fifty minutes could be. “Geez. What I’m saying is, and please don’t punch me in the throat, but have they ever made you go into therapy?”

Casey gave him what Chuck had privately begun to call the John Casey Special—two parts frustration, three parts rage, all Casey. Said look usually preceded the threat of violence, though there was only a fifty-percent chance of a follow-through occurring.

This was one of Chuck’s lucky days. Casey’s glare tapered off into a grunt. He turned his face back toward the road, tapped the steering wheel a couple of times.

“Yeah,” he finally said.

Chuck, who’d turned his attention to his burger, almost sent food down the wrong pipe. He coughed and thumped his chest with the side of his fist. “W-what?”

“Yeah, they made me go to therapy once.” Casey’s fingers jerked on the steering wheel. “Okay, not once. Twice. Had to get cleared.”

“And did you talk?” Chuck asked.

For a couple of minutes, it didn’t seem like Casey would answer. The other man just continued to drive, his attention focused both on the road and on his French fries. Finally, he grunted. “Yeah, I talked.”

“Really?”

“Had to. Job requirement.”

“Even though you knew he was just going to report everything about you to some bureaucrat?”

Casey slanted a sideways look at him. “What’s the matter, Bartowski? You think what’s in that head of yours is too special for some government bureaucrat to hear about?”

“Intersect aside?” Chuck waved that off before Casey could come back with some acidic retort. “I guess that’s Casey language for ‘the universe does not revolve around you, Chuck. Get over yourself.’ Heh. Guess I should just talk to Dr. Anton next time.”

“I didn’t say that.” Casey kept his eyes on the road. “At the end of the day, everybody has a choice. It’s your brain, you decide what you do with it—though if you’re taking suggestions, I could get behind the concept of adding shutting up more often to the list.”

“Thanks, Casey.” Chuck rolled his eyes.

“Pilots hate to go to the doctor,” Casey went on. When Chuck gave him a confused look, he tilted an eyebrow, a signal that Chuck should keep his mouth shut and listen. “Going to the doctor means there’s something wrong with them, that they can’t do their jobs because of medical trouble. Sometimes you get a pilot putting off going to the hospital so much that he makes the problem worse—worse enough to get him kicked to another job for medical reasons.”

“Irony,” Chuck remarked, wondering where this story was going.

“It’s like that with psych evals. You don’t want to go in because the doc might find something wrong with you, something that’ll get you kicked out of the Agency or put behind a desk somewhere.” Casey shifted his shoulders, thoroughly uncomfortable now. “A lot of people go in bitter, angry. The psych-heads are used to that. But, and I’m only going to say this once, Bartowski, so pay attention: they can help. And they don’t put the nitty-gritty details in those reports, just so you know. Just about whether you’re cleared for duty or not.”

“So if you say they can help…did they help you?” 

Casey snorted. “Hell, Bartowski, I was always the exception. I didn’t need help. My headspace has always been right where it belongs.”

“In a realm that would give Cthulhu nightmares?”

Casey pulled the Crown Vic into Castle’s parking lot and glared. “We’ve talked about the nerd speak,” he said, a slight growl flavoring his words. 

“Oh. Hm, yeah, you’re right. Sorry, I can’t help myself sometimes.” Chuck fished in his pocket for his phone as it rang, and took a deep breath when he saw the view-screen. Though she’d made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t angry with him about the Bryce or Ellie situations, he still felt nerves writhe through his midsection. “It’s Sarah. Anything you want to tell her?”

“Tell her to pick me up a soft-shelled crab sandwich.” Casey grabbed the fast food bag and his drink, abandoning the car as Chuck took a deep breath and answered the phone.

“Tell Sarah you want her to give you crabs. Check. Hey, Sarah,” Chuck said the last into the phone, dodging expertly. Casey growled and stalked away. “How’s DC?”

“Oh, good, Casey told you.” Sarah sounded both relieved and exhausted. “I thought for sure he’d just ‘forget’ to mention it, and leave you wondering.”

“Maybe next time. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Orders came in pretty late, and I didn’t want to wake you.” 

Chuck rolled his eyes when Casey closed the front door of Castle before he could reach it. He moved over to key in his code. “Don’t worry about waking me up. Or you could just send a text.” 

“Okay. Next time, I’ll do that.” Wherever Sarah was, it sounded busy. Chuck could hear voices in the background, which made it a little hard to hear her. “This is the first chance I’ve had to get away today, and I’ve only got a couple of minutes. They think I’m in the bathroom.”

“So you sneaked out to call me?” Chuck couldn’t stop the grin. “Look at you, breaking the rules for little old me.”

“I wanted to know how your therapy session went.”

Though she couldn’t see him, Chuck shrugged. Dr. Anton had seemed like a nice guy—boring, mid-forties, bland—but the session had been Chuck staring at the clock after they’d been introduced. “It was fine,” he lied.

“Did you like the therapist?”

“He looks nothing like you or Casey. I’m good. Why’re you in DC?” 

A tired sigh on the other end of the line. “Briefings. Back to back briefings. Lots of things to discuss, lots of wheels suddenly in motion. I’m just glad Graham stepped in and said they could only have me for a day. Otherwise, they’d probably keep me for a month.”

Chuck felt something punch through his stomach.

Sarah, across the country, seemed to sense his unrest at that thought. “I’m coming home tonight,” she said. Though her tone was purposely light, Chuck knew better. He inwardly kicked himself for being so pathetic and needy.

If Sarah could keep it light, so could he. “What’s your flight number?” he asked as he dropped into his desk chair. “I could come get you.”

“Oh, no, Chuck, you don’t have to do that. I can just get a car service.”

“I don’t mind. It’d give us a chance to catch up.” Clear up any lingering awkwardness, he added silently, as they still had a thousand things to discuss about Ellie alone. 

“All right.” She was apparently on the same length, for she said, “I need to talk to you before I see Ellie. If you really don’t mind coming to get me, that is.”

“It’d be my pleasure. Where should I meet you?”

They made the arrangements quickly, as Sarah had to hurry back to the meeting. It was only after they’d hung up that Chuck remembered Casey’s request. He shrugged and sent a text message off. _Oh, forgot to mention that Casey wants you to pick up a soft-shelled crab sandwich._

A couple of minutes passed while he went through the security protocols on his computer and collected his assignments for the afternoon. As he pulled shipping manifests up on screen, his phone buzzed. New text from Sarah.

_Of course he does. Want one, too?_

_No thanks. Shellfish that’s flown commercial gives me the willies._

_Ha. Gotta go. See you tonight._

Feeling much better, Chuck settled in to work.


	23. Sarah Versus the Bartowskis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people. — _Spencer Johnson_

**12 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (LAX)**   
**23:17 PST**

“You know, I really am capable of sitting here for fifteen minutes by myself without causing trouble,” Chuck said. He was never going to admit having Casey nearby made facing the airport easier. “You don’t have to wait.”

Casey fiddled with an unlit cigar, glaring at the no-smoking signs posted liberally around baggage claim. They’d found a couple of unoccupied chairs to wait it all out, as Sarah’s plane had left Dulles a half-hour behind schedule and had apparently met up with some pretty strong headwinds in mid-air. “I’ve yet to see you prove that, Bartowski.”

Chuck opened his mouth to protest, but stopped. It was a fair point. “Fine.”

Casey threaded the cigar through his fingers. “Leave your phone alone. The screen says her plane’s landed. She’ll get here when she gets here.” For good measure, he kicked Chuck’s ankle, as that entire leg was jiggling. “Have some damned self-respect, will you?”

“What?”

“You’re like a virgin on prom night. She’ll get here when she gets here.”

“It’s taking her a long time.”

“She’s female. They like to make you wait. Lets you know the pecking order.” Casey grunted his opinion of that. “Want my advice, Bartowski? Stay a bachelor.”

“Okay, first of all, I’m not a virgin. I just feel that should be stated for the record. And second of all, I’m not looking to date Sarah, so I don’t see what any of this has to do with bachelorhood.”

“You’re not?” Casey snorted. “News to me.”

“One, that’s inappropriate as we’re coworkers. Two, pretty sure that even if I were interested, she’s not.” She didn’t have reason to be, Chuck added silently, as he was nothing but pathetic Chuck Bartowski, who couldn’t go outside without needing a shower. Sarah definitely deserved better.

Casey snorted again. “She’s also right there.”

“What?” Chuck’s head shot up. Indeed, Sarah had just come through the arrivals gate; she stood off to the side, scanning the crowd for him. She waved and began striding over.

“Nice T-shirt,” Chuck said when she drew near.

Sarah rolled her eyes down at the green shirt with the words “Washington DC” embossed in gold across the front. “I spilled my drink on my blouse in DC, so I got this at the gift shop. Don’t mock. Hey, you.” She handed Casey a styrofoam container before she pulled Chuck in for a hug. 

When she turned toward Casey, he gave a warning growl. “Touch me, Walker, and I’ll take a page out of Bartowski’s book and tranq you right here, airport security be damned.”

“Aw, I missed you, too, Casey.” Sarah smirked. “You boys are my ride, right?”

“Bartowski is.” Casey put a hand on Chuck’s shoulder to shove him forward. “He’s your problem now, Walker.” With one final smirk at both of them, he left, grumbling about the CIA, as he always did.

“Such a happy soul,” Chuck said. “Do we need to wait for your bags?”

“Nope.”

“Really?”

“I was only gone for a day. How much luggage did you think I need?” Sarah patted the laptop bag over her shoulder.

“Hmm. Guess I’m just used to Ellie and her convoy of suitcases. She packs the same amount for two weeks as she does for an overnight trip.” 

“I lived off nothing but the land and my wits for three days in the Congo,” Sarah said as they made their way to the exit and to the parking garage. “It tends to put things in perspective.”

“Uh-huh. Well, either way, let me take that.” Chuck snatched the shoulder strap before Sarah could protest and slung it across the shoulder opposite from her. She could grab the bag back if she put her mind to it, but not without a challenge.

Instead of protesting, though, she just shrugged. “Okay. Where did you park?”

“Second level, though it’s a bit of a hike. Sorry. You’re not too tired, are you?”

“I slept on the plane.”

“Lucky. I’ve never been able to do that.”

Sarah shrugged again. “I am hungry, though,” she said after a moment of silence. “Think we can stop and get something?”

**13 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**MANHATTAN BEACH**   
**00:12 PST**

“It’s official,” Sarah said. “I’ll never doubt you again.” She proved it by taking a large bite of her burger.

“As well you shouldn’t. Geez. I can’t believe you’ve been in California a month and you’ve yet to go to an In-N-Out.” Chuck picked up his soda and took a long drink as he shook his head. “So many gaps in your education.”

“I like to think I’m working on it.” Sarah swallowed the mouthful she’d talked around. She looked out toward the water, inky black against the darker oblivion of the night sky. Only a few stars were visible this close to LA. At her request, Chuck had driven them both to the beach and parked. They sat on the hood of his car, facing the water, the food between them. It was more than a bit chilly, but Chuck had brought a jacket—which he’d promptly given to Sarah. He’d worn long-sleeves, after all. 

And it wasn’t like he really noticed the cold. He was too busy being impressed by the inroads Sarah was making on her double-double.

“You have much to learn, Kemo Sabe,” he said sagely, eyeing his fries. He hadn’t eaten most of them, but they were still almost all gone.

“Apparently.” Sarah stole another fry. “For example, these. I didn’t see these anywhere on the menu, and yet the guy in the drive-thru didn’t even question you when you said ‘Animal Fries.’”

“Half the fun of the In-N-Out is ordering off the secret menu.”

“Does that make you an In-N-Out spy, I wonder?” Sarah polished off the burger and leaned back.

“Yes.” Chuck kept his face absolutely deadpan. “I am much skilled in the ways of the In-N-Out. In fact, I am one with the secret menu. I’d tell you, but then—”

“I’d have to kill you,” Sarah chorused with him, smiling.

“Apparently your education has fewer gaps than you think.”

Sarah waved a hand, almost a listless motion. “Not really. Bryce used to say that all the time.”

Chuck, reaching for a fry, stilled. He forced himself to pick up the fry and take a casual bite, but not quickly enough. Surely enough, Sarah’s eyes tracked the motion. “And now I’ve killed the mood,” she announced.

Chuck swallowed the fry. She had, but… “If we’re going to point fingers, let’s put the blame where it really belongs, which is with Bryce. He’s the one that really killed the mood here. However, since you brought him up…”

Yes. Time to talk.” Sarah sighed and pushed off the hood of the car. “Walk with me?”

“Sure.” They left their shoes in the car and tossed the trash into one of the receptacles on the way to the sand. Even with Sarah’s announcement, both were quiet until they’d reached the water down by the sand.

“So you went to DC because of Bryce?” Chuck asked.

Sarah stayed quiet for another moment longer. “Yes. And to take a few lie detector tests.”

“What?”

“It’s not a big deal. I had to take the same ones last month after we got picked up in Greece.”

“What?” Indignation had Chuck straightening up. “Why?”

“If I’m Fulcrum or working with Bryce, they need to know right away so that they can start vetting my replacement.”

The thought of Sarah ever being replaced threatened to suck all of the oxygen out of the beach, but his indignation was still burning too hotly for Chuck to acknowledge it. He scowled. “If they’re making you take all of these tests, why aren’t they doing the same to me? Frankly, I find that a little sexist and insulting. After all, I look far guiltier than you do. I gave Bryce those scans.”

“Chuck they can’t make you go through lie detector testing.”

“Why not?”

Sarah seemed at a loss for words, which confused him. It wasn’t that hard a question. She shook her head. “It would be a bad idea, that’s all,” she said after a minute. “We have no idea what sort of thing might affect the Intersect. And Gwen Davenport’s not going to let anybody within miles of your head without explicit written permission.”

“Signed in triplicate,” Chuck agreed. “By the president. Still, Sarah, you shouldn’t have to do those tests. It’s like a freaking slap in the face.”

Sarah moved a shoulder. “If it proves I’m innocent and it keeps me here, I’m fine.”

It wasn’t fine. It was bull. Chuck, however, recognized the look on her face, so he kept that to himself. The government had no right in hell to treat one of their best agents that way, not after everything she’d sacrificed for the Intersect project. He forced a teasing smile on his face. “And the tests _did_ prove that you’re not a liar, right?”

“Also that I’m a borderline type-A personality, among other things. And that I’m not Fulcrum.”

Chuck nodded. They walked along the water’s edge for a couple of minutes. “You said something about briefings?” he asked when the silence had stretched into an uncomfortable length. “You didn’t have to sit and lecture a bunch of secret agents in dark suits and sunglasses about gun safety, did you?”

“No.” Sarah smiled. “Just Beckman and Graham.”

“Oh, that sounds like a party and a half.”

“Not really, no. I had to give them both a personalized breakdown of my observations about Bryce.”

“I hope you remembered to mention that he snores.”

“Loud enough to wake the dead,” Sarah said, raising her eyebrows. “Had to wear earplugs in college?”

“On the positive side, it taught me how to sleep through everything up to and including the zombie apocalypse.”

“Handy.”

“I always thought so. Did they know _anything_ about this Fulcrum group Bryce is talking about, or are we looking at a complete SNAFU of epic proportions?”

“It appears that if we did have any intel on Fulcrum, it went the way of the original Intersect files.”

“So…” Chuck swallowed. “Stuck in my noggin?”

“Maybe. They’re not sure. I’ll brief you and Casey on everything they covered today, and about Operation Prometheus’s new objectives and mission tomorrow.” Sarah stopped walking and stared hard out into the water. The moon had waned to a sliver, allowing only minimal moonlight across the beach. Chuck could see splinters of it highlighting Sarah’s hair, turning the blond silver around the edges. Wary now, he paused and turned. He recognized that look, however slight it might be. Sarah was working herself up to tell him something.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and waited her out. It wouldn’t be long now.

Sure enough, she didn’t disappointed. “Chuck, Bryce wasn’t the only reason I went to DC.”

“Okay. What was the other reason?”

Sarah took a deep breath. “Ellie.”

Everything inside Chuck went deathly silent, so quiet that there wasn’t even an echo. He slowly drew his hands out of his pockets to fold his arms over his chest. “Explain.”

His voice didn’t sound like him. It sounded older, angrier. Harder.

Indeed, Sarah gave him a startled look. “They want to add Ellie to Operation Prometheus.”

“And why would they want to do that? Unless…” Chuck trailed off. He felt the first sharp taste of fury begin to boil through him, so cold that it left smoking burns everywhere. “You told them.” It wasn’t a question.

“I had to.” Her chin came up.

“Why?”

“Did you want them to find out because we screwed up somehow?”

“Isn’t it better to ask forgiveness than permission?”

“Which is essentially what I spent all day doing.” Sarah crossed her arms over her chest.

Normally, the warning edge to her words would have made Chuck back off and start apologizing. That was how it went between them, wasn’t it? They had a fight, they saw reason, and it was over. Not this time. Fear of Sarah had been replaced by fear, and anger, and every awful emotion under the sun. He wanted to hack and slash and burn. No way in hell was the government that had managed to ruin his life going anywhere near his sister. He’d take down a platoon of Army Rangers bare-handed before it came to that.

But he wasn’t facing Army Rangers now. No, he just had an exasperated Sarah Walker to contend with, which was worse.

“That’s your own fault,” he said. “If you hadn’t _told_ them—”

“They would have found out at the worst possible moment and they would have done something more drastic.”

“More drastic?” Chuck laughed, an ugly, bitter sound that surprised even him. “Sarah, I told her so that she wouldn’t kick you out of the apartment. That was all it was. It should have stayed between her and you and me. There was no reason to get the NSA, CIA, or the whole damned government involved!”

“And what happens when one us accidentally says the wrong thing, or Ellie herself slips up—”

“Ellie wouldn’t—”

“What then, Chuck?” Sarah’s eyes were practically blazing in the low light, cobalt blue against the night. “They wanted to put her in witness protection.”

Chuck’s stomach dropped out. “Wh-what—”

“But I convinced them that that would irreparably damage the Intersect. So a compromise was struck.”

The words “witness protection” were still making him light-headed. Lose Ellie? After all of the leaps and bounds they’d made, after getting her back after five years apart? No way in hell. Chuck’s knees went rubbery, so he dropped down into the sand right on the spot. “Compromise?” he asked.

“Hear me out.” Sarah folded her legs under her and sat next to him. She seemed to be vibrating with anger, but her voice was coolly controlled. “Their first option was to throw Ellie and Devon in witness protection, as my cover has been blown. _If_ Ellie chooses to keep me on as a roommate, we may not have any trouble, as I talked Beckman and Graham into believing that would be enough.”

“If they’re fine with that, why—”

“It’s pretty much the same arrangement we have now, I know,” Sarah said.

Chuck glowered. “Great. Fine. Let’s do that. I’ll talk to Ellie—”

“But,” Sarah said, holding up a hand and stressing the word, “you need to understand something, Chuck. If we do that, if we let sleeping dogs lie or whatever, Ellie can be used as leverage against you.”

The blood drained out of Chuck’s face. “They wouldn’t—”

“Damn it, Chuck, these are the same idiots who locked you away in the middle of Siberia! Hell yes they would!”

Chuck’s hands started to shake. Both he and Sarah glanced down at them. He shoved them into his pockets and glared at her. “Why did you have to _tell_ them?” he demanded, not caring that he sounded petulant.

“Because let’s say I didn’t tell them, and they still somehow find out. You know what happens then? Ellie lands in witness protection, I’m working in an outpost in the ass-end of Australia, and worst of all, you’re back in a bunker getting fed daily assignments.” Sarah sighed and buried her hands in her hair. “Want to hear option B now?”

“Unless it involves a time machine—”

“It doesn’t.”

“Then no.”

“Too bad. Option B means that—”

“I don’t have to listen to this.” Fury, disgust, fear all mingled together to sit like a rusted, sickening ball in his stomach. He pushed himself to his feet.

“Where are you going?”

“To call Beckman and Graham and tell them to leave my sister out of this.”

“Chuck—”

“No. No way in hell am I letting them anywhere near her. You can come with me or you can get a cab, which of course I will pay for since I’m the one stranding you, but whether you come with me or not, I’m going.” Chuck started to stride away.

“Chuck!”

Again, he stopped, but he didn’t turn. “Sarah, for the last time—”

“I’m not stopping you. I just wondered how you were going to go anywhere without these.” Behind Chuck, something jingled.

He turned, slowly, and stared at the keys that dangled from Sarah’s fingers. Even without the lego Darth Vader keychain, they were unmistakable. He felt around in his pockets. Empty. “How the hell—they teach pick-pocketing at the Farm?” 

Why Sarah would look sad at that, he had no earthly idea. At another point, he would have cared. “No,” she said. “I learned that a long time before I got the Farm.”

“When? Back in your days of working for the Artful Dodger?” Chuck rolled his eyes and held out a hand for his keys.

Her fist closed around them. “Not until you hear me out.”

“If it puts my sister anywhere near the government, no.”

“Damn it, Chuck, she’s been in range of the government since you decided you wanted the operation set in Burbank.”

“Fine. That’s an easy fix. I’ll leave Burbank—”

“And cost the government millions of dollars to move mission headquarters? Get real, Chuck. And it doesn’t change the fact that Ellie knows. Damn it, I had been doing my level best to make sure it didn’t come to this, so that we wouldn’t end up in this position. I was _trying_ to convince Ellie that we were just dating or something inappropriate, so that she wouldn’t wonder—”

Chuck choked on nothing.

“But I seriously underestimated all things Bartowski. _Again_. Now will you please just listen to me for one damn minute?”

“Don’t have much of a choice, as you stole my keys.” Chuck waved his cell phone at her, grateful she hadn’t seen fit to take that, too. “Two minutes before I call a cab.”

“Fine.” Sarah took a deep breath. “You’re right. We can go back to the arrangement we have now, with Ellie knowing precisely what she does now and nothing more. But know that Ellie will never fully be safe from the government and the threat of witness protection, so really, burying our heads in the sand and pretending everything is copacetic isn’t an option.”

“What is, then?”

“We invite Ellie to join Prometheus.”

“No.”

“Still my two minutes, Chuck. Ellie joins Prometheus as an auxiliary member, and she gets a rep.”

Chuck’s hands slowly dropped to his sides. “Like Gwen.”

“Not just like Gwen. She gets Gwen. I made that part clear, and I stopped by to see Gwen on my way to the airport. She’s already agreed to take Ellie’s case, which she can’t do unless Ellie gets an official position in the organization. In this case, it would be the NSA.”

Despite everything, Chuck felt a stab of insult. “Why not CIA?”

“Because three CIA members to Casey’s one NSA member doesn’t make any sense.” Sarah abruptly turned and stared out across the water again. 

Chuck absorbed all of this without moving. His brain was already at work, turning over everything Sarah was telling him, even through a bitter sort of anger. She had a point. He didn’t want her to be right.

“But it does come with downsides,” Sarah said, still facing away from him. “Ellie would be expected to play a part in Prometheus.” A pause, and Sarah took a deep breath. “Chuck, she would be read into the full Prometheus reports. The Intersect, all of it. She would be brought in as your primary physician, as well as emergency medical help for the team.”

“Isn’t that against common sense—too close to the patient?”

Sarah shook her head. “Yes, but we don’t have a lot of options. Bryce maneuvered you into such a strange position, Chuck. Casey and I are pretty much frozen to Prometheus, whatever we do, as it’s always a risk bringing in new personnel. The more people that know your identity and your abilities, the greater the risk of that knowledge getting out becomes. And with Ellie, you and I both know that would never be a problem.”

“But, if that’s the case, then why does Ellie need to know about the Intersect—”

“Because the Intersect is a part of you, and you’re the first person to ever have something like this buried in your brain. It has everything to do with your health now. Ellie would need to know about it.” She took a deep breath. “There’s another thing. They want her for more than that, though.”

“Why? What the hell does the government want with my sister?”

“Realistically?” Sarah winced, just an imperceptible movement, and Chuck’s eyes narrowed. “Chuck, you have to understand something—”

“Just tell me.”

“Ellie’s made no bones of the fact that she hopes to go into neurology. Her education shows the very obvious trend toward it, and she’s applied to USC for a neurology fellowship.” Sarah turned and faced Chuck. “She won’t get it this year—she’s up against some of the brightest minds in the country, and the program is limited, even if she was in the top five percent of her class and brilliant besides.”

“I hear a ‘but’ in your voice,” Chuck said slowly.

“The government—the NSA in this case—is willing to pull some strings and get her that fellowship.”

“What do they want from her in return, Sarah?”

“They want her to monitor the effects of the Intersect on your brain.”

Chuck sat down in the sand again. “Ellie’s wanted that fellowship since middle school.”

“I know.” When Chuck shot a suspicious look at Sarah, she shrugged. “No, it doesn’t say so in her file. She told me so herself. We _have_ been roommates for over a month, you know. And Chuck, it’s a great fit. She’d be able to look for signs that Casey and I miss, and she’d know your identity and your medical history better than any other neurologist would.”

“And I wouldn’t just be Patient X to her.” Chuck said nothing for a full minute. He had his face turned toward the ocean, could feel the breeze ruffling his shirt and his hair and making his hands and feet cold. But he paid attention to none of it. His brain was too busy spinning, going through every possibility, even though he wanted nothing more than to throw an actual tantrum right there on the sand. The government had done _enough_ to Ellie Bartowski. Couldn’t they see that? Couldn’t they see that they’d damaged her when they hadn’t told her that Chuck was fine? And now they wanted more from her.

But she’d wanted that fellowship for nearly twenty years now. And the government was just…offering it to her. She’d get her dream, she wouldn’t be leverage, and best of all, he wouldn’t have to lie to her. Chuck felt Sarah sit down next to him on the sand, but didn’t look over. Was it worth it? Was all of this, all of Ellie’s dreams and their problems being solved, worth the strings that would be placed over everything? 

A thought occurred to him. “So you’re saying that in addition to studying my head and working on a very competitive fellowship, she’d also be team physician?” Chuck gave Sarah a look. “Are you crazy? I know my sister is great, but even she needs sleep.”

“I know that. I petitioned to have Devon added as a civilian consultant so that he can be team physician in her stead.”

“Awesome’s gonna be the team doc?”

“He’d have a more restricted clearance than Ellie, but he’s more qualified for the position, as he’s a surgeon and we might need that. Ellie would have final say on everything having to do with your head, though. Plus it means that Ellie wouldn’t have to lie to him about anything.” Sarah gave Chuck a droll look. “I may have underestimated the Bartowskis once, but not again. Your programming is set to ‘emotional chatterbox.’”

“No emotion left untold,” Chuck said, though he didn’t quite see the humor at the moment.

Sarah let him have another minute of quiet, while his mind roiled and churned. “Where’s your head at?” she finally asked, nerves clear in her voice.

Chuck shook his head. “I don’t want any of this to be happening,” he said. “I don’t care if that sounds petulant, or whiny, or spoiled. I don’t want any of this to go near my sister. She’s a good person, one of the few decent people left in the world.” She’d helped raise him when it would have been the easiest thing to leave him to his own devices. She’d gone out of her way to make sure that her little brother had every advantage on the planet, and now he was dragging her into government conspiracies.

Government conspiracies that could help her get her lifelong dream. 

But at a price, he knew.

“And I’m angry,” he went on. “Really mad.”

“At me?”

“No. Well, yes.” Chuck glared at the water. If only she hadn’t told, he wouldn’t be sitting on the sand, contemplating changing Ellie’s life completely. It didn’t matter that she had a point. “But at other things, too. You should have told me first, what you were going to do.”

“Somebody once told me that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission,” Sarah said. Chuck just switched his scowl from the sea to her. She sighed and hugged her knees to her chest. “Guess now’s not the time to be glib.”

“Gee, really?” Chuck’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “You’re under orders to tell Ellie about this, aren’t you?”

“She’s getting off work in half an hour. I called her and let her know we needed to talk.”

“You can’t put it off until I’ve had time to think about it, and maybe come up with some alternatives?”

Sarah shook her head, looking sad now. “The bosses want her answer tomorrow.”

Chuck swore his opinion of that.

“You’re pissed,” Sarah said, “and you have every right to be. I know you and Ellie are close, and you see this as the government screwing her over like they did to you.”

“Damn right I do.”

“But Chuck, it’s like you told her the other night. She’s going to have the same people in her corner as you do now. She’ll have Gwen protecting her interests, and she’ll have me and even Casey. And she’ll have you.”

“Lot of help I’ve been,” Chuck said, snorting, “seeing as I’m the one that got her into this.”

“You’re not. If we’re going to put the blame where it belongs, let’s point fingers at the right people, right? It’s not you, and it’s not me, doing this to Ellie. This is all on the government’s shoulders.” Sarah touched his shoulder, tentatively, to make him look over at her. “She’s a victim here, just like you are, and you both have people willing to help you out. Neither of you is alone in this, okay?”

Chuck stared at her until he had to look away. “Okay.”

“Now, c’mon, we need to go. I stopped feeling my feet ten minutes ago, and I want to prep for my talk with Ellie.” Sarah rose and reached down to pull him up as well.

He shrugged out of her grip and pushed himself to his feet without her help. “I want to be there when you talk to her.”

Sarah hesitated. “I think it would be for the best if Ellie and I talked privately,” she said after a few seconds. “I can give her a message from you, but that’s all. I’m the one that’s been deceiving her, so I should be the one that comes clean.”

That was a bit much, the part of Chuck that wasn’t buried under layers of anger and hurt thought. Sarah had been doing her job, representing his wishes, when she had lied to Ellie. It wasn’t any reason to wear a hair-shirt and do penance, but he couldn’t quite bring himself up to say so when he was still so annoyed at her for essentially going behind his back about reporting to their superiors about Ellie.

They walked back to the car in silence. Every few feet, Chuck felt Sarah’s eyes flick toward him. He kept his face set into a scowl. He couldn’t _think_. Everything inside was a mishmash of confused emotion. Hope for Ellie. Wanting to come clean to his sister, fully. Wanting to run far, far away and take his sister, keep her safe from everything the government could throw at her, the way she’d once protected him from the monsters that lived under the bed and in the closet.

But they were adults now. And the only thing protection _he_ could offer was…Sarah.

She gave him back his keys when they reached his car. Still silent, they pulled on their shoes. Chuck turned on the ignition and put the car into gear. Twenty minutes stretched by, a small eternity.

Finally, he cleared his throat, and Sarah looked away from where she’d been staring out the window with her chin resting on her fist. “One thing when dealing with Ellie?” Chuck said. “She likes to throw things when she’s really angry. Luckily, her aim sucks.”

Sarah smiled tentatively. “Thanks for the warning.”

“Does…if she says yes, and she gets full disclosure into the Intersect project, does that mean that…” Chuck trailed off, cleared his throat. “Does that mean she’s going to find out that they stuck me in a bunker all alone for five years?”

Sarah nodded.

“I don’t want her to know.” Chuck stared out at the road in front of him. Thankfully, traffic was relatively light for this hour, so the ride wouldn’t drag on forever. But he didn’t want to meet Sarah’s gaze right now. He wasn’t strong enough to face whatever he might see there, whether it be compassion or pity or even aggravation. “I can’t let her know that.”

“Chuck, it directly affects—”

“It’s a deal-breaker.”

“If she gets full disclosure—”

“Lie. Tell her that I had a team of five or six with me in seclusion. I don’t want her to know that I was alone.” Chuck swallowed hard. “I don’t want her to live with that knowledge.”

“Lying to her is what got us into this mess in the first place,” Sarah said.

Chuck wanted to disagree that no, telling the higher-ups about it had been the thing that had gotten them into this mess. “This is different,” he said. 

“Because it’s you and not the government doing the lying?”

“Because I’ve broken my sister’s heart enough.”

Sarah didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. They rode along in utterly uncomfortable silence until Sarah reached forward and turned the radio on. She didn’t fiddle with it as Chuck would have, so they just listened to the classic rock station without comment until Chuck pulled the car up by the pillars on either side of the apartment entrance. Sarah turned down Derek and the Dominoes and looked over at him. “Okay.”

“What?”

“I won’t tell Ellie you were alone in the bunker. But just so that our stories are straight, you had three others with you, and you were stationed in a small camp in Switzerland.”

He could live with that. “And you visited me a few times.”

Sarah hesitated before answering. “Sure. I can tell her that.”

“It’s partially the truth.”

“Yes.” Sarah twisted to retrieve her bag from the backseat. She gave him one long, sad, searching look before she took a deep breath and touched his wrist. “I’m sorry that my cover wasn’t better when I got here, and that Ellie’s getting dragged into the mess.”

He didn’t want to hear that apology, as it meant that she was already chipping through the wall of anger he felt toward both her and the government. “Let’s just blame the government for that one, too,” he said. “Since it’s a night for pointing fingers.”

“Deal. Go home, get some sleep. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

“Will you let me know Ellie’s decision?” 

“If she doesn’t tell you herself, I will. Text me when you get home so I know you made it all right.” Sarah squeezed his wrist and climbed out of the car. She strode away without looking back.

Chuck idled the car by the curb for a couple of minutes longer. He just didn’t have the energy to pull into traffic and finish the drive home, handful of blocks away or no. In less than an hour, one of the most important women in his life would be offering the other a choice, and he hated himself for hoping that his sister would say yes.

**13 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: DOJO**   
**07:24 PST**

Chuck hadn’t slept, even though he was exhausted. His brain simply hadn’t allowed it. It had never stopped churning and moving and spitting out logic and statistics until he wanted to pound his head into the wall a few times to just get it all to stop. He hadn’t dared. Doing so would wake Casey, which was the equivalent of poking a sleeping Rancor in the eye and doing the hula in drag rather than bothering to hide. So he’d laid on his back, tucked into the very corner of his room with the mattress Sarah had eventually caved and bought for him, and watched the way the shadows moved across the ceiling as the night dragged on. At around six, he had stopped fighting the inevitable, and had dragged himself downstairs to drown his sorrows in a bowl of cereal.

He’d gone through his morning routine at Castle, as he didn’t feel like waiting around for Casey to come out of his bedroom and comment that he looked like crap. Tuesday meant a round of Tai Chi Quan, Chen style, a good chunk of time sweating on Castle’s weight bench and with the free weights. He’d just finished up a grueling set of push-ups when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Combat boots. Must be Casey, he thought.

Indeed, the other man stepped into the dojo and raised an eyebrow. “Did you sleep at all, Bartowski?”

No.” Chuck wiped off the weight bench while Casey stretched. “Intersect flashes just fine whether or not I’m tired.”

Casey grunted and began his morning stretch ritual. “Not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“We’re being briefed by the higher-ups today. Sit in the back, away from the screens. It’ll look less like somebody gave you a couple of shiners that way.”

“Thanks, Casey.” Chuck rolled his eyes and tossed the towel into the laundry receptacle by the door.

Casey grunted. “You okay, Chuck?”

“I’m fine. Just…didn’t sleep well. I’m going to go shower and get started on the day’s assignments since we’ve got briefings to worry about today.” 

Since Casey let that go with yet another Casey-like noise, for which there should definitely be a dictionary, Chuck shrugged to himself and headed to the showers. He peeled off his old Army T-shirt as he walked, as Sarah was still probably at her apartment sleeping like the smart part of the population. Neither she nor Ellie had called during the night. He wondered what Ellie had said, how she had reacted, how Sarah had phrased the problem for her. What was Ellie thinking now? Chuck moved into the main conference bay, heading toward the locker room.

Oh.

Sarah definitely wasn’t a couple of miles away, sleeping like a sane person. Just as he hit the hallway that led back to the gun range and the locker room, she stepped out of one of the storage rooms they used for downstairs offices. Their eyes met. Her eyes dropped to his naked chest, down to the sweaty T-shirt clutched in his fist, and finally, almost reluctantly, back to meet his gaze. 

He froze.

“Uh…” Sarah seemed to be blinking a lot, and he instantly felt bad. He probably reeked, covered in sweat as he was. “I was just going upstairs to file something.”

Where the hell was this awkwardness coming from? “Right. And I was, ah—shower.” Chuck pointed.

Sarah quickly stepped out of his way. “Right,” she echoed him. “I’ll, uh, let you do that, then. If you need me—”

“Upstairs, right?” Chuck asked, smiling despite the fact that his body hurt, his hands hurt worse, and every particle of him ached in some form or another. He stepped past Sarah and had almost made it to the locker room before he remembered why he was so tired. He turned.

Sarah suddenly found something on the ceiling interesting.

“What did she say?” he asked, almost too afraid to ask.

Sarah’s gaze cut down to his. Her shoulders seemed to sag, though she didn’t actually move. “She’s thinking it over,” she said. “She wanted to sleep on it.”

If Ellie was anything like him, she hadn’t done much sleeping.

“Oh,” Chuck said. “When…when will we know?”

“Today. I’ll tell you as soon as I know.”

“Okay.” Chuck turned without another word and headed for the showers. After an endless night, it was going to be a hell of a long day.

**13 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: UPSTAIRS**   
**09:52 PST**

“All right, that’s it.”

Chuck’s nose stopped before it could complete its most recent nose-dive toward his desk, understandably so. Casey had appeared in the doorway to his office, and the look on his face usually warned of violence or a mission to come. Since there was no mission on their slate—the Prometheus team was waiting to be briefed and given new objectives—Casey’s expression could only mean violence.

And since Chuck was currently the only one in his office, there was really only one target for said intended violence. He felt the attack of nerves now was more than justified.

“Get up, CIA,” Casey said, striding toward his desk.

Chuck shot to his feet and tried to stumble backwards. He tripped over his chair.

Casey just grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him away from the danger of stumbling over his own feet. “Time to go.”

“Wh-what?” Chuck blinked.

Instead of replying, Casey simply opened the Scooby door and shoved Chuck through. He followed the nerd down the stairs.

“C-Casey? Where are we going?” Chuck staggered down the steps.

“Once again, I’m cleaning up the CIA’s mess, obviously.” Casey kept pushing and nudging until he’d walked Chuck most of the way through Castle and into one of the cells.

Chuck balked in the doorway. “C-Casey? Are you arresting me?”

“No.” Casey pointed at the cot along the wall. “Grab a couple hours’ sleep. If I let you talk to the higher-ups looking like you do right now, Walker and I are both in trouble, so do us all a favor and get some damned rest.”

And he stood in the doorway of the cell, arms crossed, waiting.

“Um, I’m not going to sleep with you just standing there watching me like that.” Chuck scowled. “And I’m fine, I don’t need sleep—”

Casey merely reached out and poked him in the shoulder. Chuck staggered backwards, stumbling into the cot, his arms flailing. When he opened his mouth to argue, Casey merely raised an eyebrow.

“Fine,” Chuck said. “An hour.”

“Two.”

“Ninety minutes.”

“Fine.” 

“And tell Sarah I want to know the instant my sister calls.”

Casey rolled his eyes, but since Chuck was busy taking off his shoes, he just muttered something about being reduced to carrying messages and playing nursemaid for the damned CIA. Chuck thought he heard something about the Khybur Pass as the other man stalked away. He’d have to puzzle that one another time, though. 

Mindful that Casey was now the dragon at the gates, and that Sarah would probably back him up, Chuck had no choice but to lay down, even though his head was spinning with the amount of work left to do. A full load of Intersect-related files to review, as well as a cross-current search on dead Phillip Dartmoors, and he’d finally gotten clearance to hack into the gift store security footage at Stanford and see if he could find Bryce buying the Stanford tee he’d been wearing at the game. That was on top of in-depth briefings, both from Sarah over what she’d learned the day before in DC and from the higher-ups, that would be coming this afternoon. Sleeping now would generally be a waste of time.

He was out within twenty seconds.

All too soon, he opened his eyes to see Sarah sitting on the edge of his cot, her eyebrows high. “So that’s why Casey’s so grumpy,” she said while he blinked at her in confusion. “You made him get in touch with the emotions the rest of us mere mortals have to suffer through.”

Chuck pushed his hands against his face. He felt better, marginally—well, actually, he just felt less like crap. “How long was I out?”

Sarah checked her watch. “About two and a half hours, give or take.”

“What?” That shot him to full wakefulness, though he didn’t sit up. That required too much energy. “Casey said ninety minutes!”

“And you listened to him?” Sarah shook her head. “You needed the rest, Chuck.”

“But—but there’s so much to do—”

“There’s always so much to do. It’ll get done when it gets done.” Sarah’s smile faded. “You could probably do with at least another hour, but there’s no time. Ellie’s here.”

Chuck bolted upright on the cot, glancing wildly about the cell as if expecting his sister to magically teleport in. “Where?”

“Relax. I left her upstairs in my office. She wants to tell both of us her decision together.”

Everything inside Chuck just stopped moving again. “You already know,” he said, watching Sarah’s face closely. She was apparently struggling to meet his eyes, never a good sign. “You know what she’s going to say.”

Sarah moved a shoulder and looked away. “I’m trained to recognize body language, Chuck. It’s kind of hard to miss with her.”

“There’s really going to be no way to change her mind,” Chuck said, rubbing his hand across his chin and down his throat.

“Probably not. Seems like a general Bartowski trait to me. C’mon.” Sarah patted his knee and rose to her feet.

“You want me to come with?”

“She wants to tell us both,” Sarah repeated, “at the same time, remember? And you don’t want to miss your sister’s first briefing, do you?”

Chuck tilted his head to look up at her. “You mean, I get to be in on it?”

Sarah, already to the door, paused and gave him an odd look. “Why wouldn’t you be?”

“Well, you didn’t exactly seem to want me there when you were offering her the job.”

“I had my reasons.” Sarah leaned back against the door jamb to wait while Chuck pulled on his shoes and adjusted his tie, taking his time to go through the motions. Every second used was a second put off, a second where he wouldn’t have to go upstairs and face his sister and her decision to potentially throw away her life. He could feel Sarah’s eyes on him the whole time, and knew that she knew exactly what he was doing.

She didn’t say anything.

When Chuck finally rose to his feet and nodded, she gave him a sad look. “Ready for this?”

“No.” He sighed. “But let’s get it over with anyway.”

Together, they headed upstairs to where Ellie waited.


	24. The Stone Hitting the Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The keys to patience are acceptance and faith. Accept things as they are, and look realistically at the world around you. Have faith in yourself and in the direction you have chosen. — _Ralph Marston_

**13 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS  
15:37 PST**

“For our next point, we’ll have to officially welcome Dr. Bartowski to the team at another point in time, as her busy schedule made her unavailable for this meeting.” General Beckman frowned her opinion of that, but, since the briefing had quite a few agenda points to get through, she didn’t seem to want to dwell on the subject. “Until the NSA can furnish Dr. Bartowski with a proper cover identity and code name, please refer to her as Dr. X in your reports.”

Chuck kept the frown off of his face only because Sarah had warned him not to react during the briefing. His feelings about Ellie—and Devon—joining Prometheus were still a mixed kettle of piranhas, even in the face of Ellie’s obvious excitement about getting to work in the field of her dreams. And to finally have her little brother as a test subject, he thought, somewhat wryly. They really hadn’t progressed far from the days when she’d examined all of his playground scrapes and bruises. Maybe he could convince Sarah that they needed to stock Incredible Hulk band-aids in Castle, just for old times’ sake.

“Now, onto why we’re really here,” General Beckman went on when nobody had any comments about Ellie joining the team. “This mysterious Fulcrum group that Agent Larkin told Agent Bartowski about. I trust you’ve all had a chance to review the Sand Wall documents.”

Chuck raised a hand, though he wasn’t in a classroom. “General, if I may?”

Sarah and Casey flicked surprised glances over their shoulders at Chuck. They were seated at the conference table, Chuck on the very end with Sarah and Casey between him and the screens. He usually didn’t speak up during the longer format briefings—that way often led to disaster—but since the subject involved everything that had to do with his head…

“Yes, Agent Bartowski?”

“The documents from Sand Wall seem to point toward the goal of having a human Intersect, but at the same time, all of the reports on my progress as Patient X have all been surprised as hell that I’m even functioning with this mega-computer in my head.” Chuck leaned forward on his elbows, clasping his hands together so that he wouldn’t try to mess with his tie. “I have to admit I’m confused. If a human Intersect was what they were building toward, why are they so shocked that it worked?”

On the screen, General Beckman paused. Her features were normally set to scowl, which hadn’t changed, but now Chuck could sense a troubled undertone to her words.

“Operation Intersect was the brainchild of a small, select group of scientists. Unfortunately, their personal data was deleted from our system early on in the project’s lifetime, so we have no knowledge of who actually created the Intersect.”

“But the scientists that tested me—”

“Only worked on the late stages of the project and never with the Intersect’s creators. They were never told about the Intersect’s ability to reside within a human mind.” General Beckman folded her hands on her desk. She was giving the briefing alone, as Director Graham had been called away at the last minute to a function. 

Chuck felt the exhaustion get the better of him, and sighed. “So what you’re saying, General, is that all knowledge of the people that created the Intersect went the way of things like Area Fifty-One?”

“Absolutely not.” General Beckman looked offended. “We know exactly what happened to Area Fifty-One, Agent Bartowski.”

Had she just—was that a joke? Chuck glanced over at Casey, who looked thoughtful, and over to Sarah. She had her hand in front of her face, covering her lips, while she looked down at a file in front of her.

On screen, General Beckman sighed. “Yes,” she said, “I just told a joke. You have my permission to laugh.”

Casey did so. Sarah merely smiled. Chuck was still too busy boggling to listen to cues.

“If you wish, Agent Bartowski, I’ll have any surviving documents that we do have on the Intersect Project sent to you.” 

“Really? You’d do that?”

Abruptly, Beckman’s face lost all of its kindness. “Yes, if it means we can proceed with the actual point of this briefing. Let’s move on, shall we?”

Ah, there it was, Chuck thought. Just when he’d begun to suspect that the General had had a brain transplant, she proved him wrong. Whew. He sat back in his seat, but kept his hands folded and clasped on the table in front of him.

“From Agent Bartowski’s reports, we’ve been able to come to the conclusion that Agent Larkin was recruited by this so-called Fulcrum group in order to steal and destroy the NSA/CIA joint version of the Intersect. We believe that Fulcrum wishes to create their own Intersect, but cannot do so without the science provided by the original creators.”

Who were so well-hidden, Chuck thought, that even the Central Freaking Intelligence Agency couldn’t find them.

“So what does that mean for us? For Prometheus?” he asked.

“Your overall mission objective will not change.” Beckman’s gaze swept over all three team members. “Agent Bartowski provides too valuable a service to be ignored, as his odd mental acuity for the Intersect has led us to find things that no computer would be able to discover. However, in light of the fact that we are dealing with an enemy that is almost literally unknown…”

Great, Chuck thought. A faceless enemy. Just what he didn’t need.

“We can be grateful that there have been no signs that this Fulcrum group is aware of Agent Bartowski’s identity. No undue attention has been given to the Carmichael persona, either, but given Agent Walker and Agent Casey’s proximity to the Intersect project, we’ve taken precautions.” General Beckman touched a button on her end of the connection, and immediately photo IDs of Sarah and Casey took up one of the screens on the wall. “Cover identities are being built for Sarah Walker and John Casey in various parts of Africa, running counter-intelligence missions for your respective branches. Major Casey and Agent Walker will now be on the record as ICE Agents Jaime Winter and Mike Rainer. Any reports filed will bear those names.”

“What?” Casey sat up straighter, his eyebrows going low over his eyes. “We’re going with the cover identities Bartowski created?”

“They’re remarkably complex for a few hours’ work. This is strictly for the purpose of introducing yourself to future auxiliary teams. Otherwise, protocols have not changed.”

Sarah flipped through the folder in front of her, which Chuck now saw listed all of the details for ICE Agent Jaime Winter. “Hmm. What are the protocols for when we run into agents we’ve worked with before?”

“You’re good spies, I suspect you’ll come up with something.”

Chuck leaned forward to get a better look at Sarah’s cover details. She swatted at his wrist and pulled the file away, rolling her eyes. Chuck still caught the smile she tried to hide.

“You said our overall objective hadn’t changed,” Casey said, ignoring the Mike Rainer file that lay in front of him. “But some objectives have?”

“Yes. As of this moment, I’m placing Operation Prometheus on the forefront of the hunt for Agent Larkin. I understand that Agent Bartowski has been gathering data on his own. Major Casey has kept us informed of his progress.” 

Chuck shot Casey a betrayed look. Casey shrugged.

“Agent Walker, as she has the strongest connection with Agent Larkin, will take over that prong of Prometheus’s objective, using the technology that should be arriving at Castle later today. If Agent Bartowski would be willing to pass all of his intel to her?” General Beckman’s question wasn’t actually a request, but Chuck nodded anyway. “Excellent. I have my analysts hard at work on possible leads on Fulcrum, correlating data based on the limited facts we’ve managed to glean from Agent Bartowski. We’ll have a list of leads for you to follow by tomorrow.”

It was definitely a start, Chuck thought, though he had to wonder what kind of leads Beckman’s people could even hope to generate, given that they’d known absolutely nothing about a cabal that had managed to not only blow up a government building, but destroy one of its greatest projects in the meantime. Still, there wasn’t much he could do but listen as Beckman let them know exactly what was going to happen in the near future.

**13 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**BACHELOR PAD**   
**21:12 PST**

Thanks to his forced nap in Castle, Chuck was able to make it back to the Bachelor Pad without doing a nosedive into his steering wheel or driving his car off of the road, something that he hoped the US government appreciated. After all, he was carrying their precious Intersect, wasn’t he? They should be grateful every day he woke up and didn’t immediately leap off his balcony. They should give him a friggin’ medal.

A Red Bull or two had helped him get through the lasagna Casey had microwaved for both of them. He’d done the dishes (which involved throwing the paper plates that Sarah despaired of them having away), taken out the trash, regular Monday night things. Since there wasn’t much on TV, he retreated up to his room, but he didn’t turn on the video game console. Schnookie took up one of the dual monitors on his desk, but he ignored her.

It was time to find Phillip Dartmoor once and for all.

First, though, he had to clean all of the files off of his bed. They were just a waste of paper, anyway, since Dartmoor was actually dead, so he gathered them into a stack to dump in the trash can on the way to work the next day.

So much work, he thought, all of it useless.

He wanted to kick something. 

Instead, he sat at his computer and hit the space bar to bring his second screen to life. A couple of keystrokes brought up his security checker. Sarah hadn’t been by the Bachelor Pad recently, but before he did anything these days, he had to make sure she hadn’t somehow ninja’d her way into his files. It added an odd flavor to their relationship, but he didn’t mind.

Maybe that spoke a lot about his mental state.

Maybe he didn’t care.

He typed in the last of his security protocols and grinned at his welcome screen, a screenshot of Schnookie trying to eat the end of her own braid. Good times, he thought, bringing up his search matrix. Phillip Dartmoor was already a saved entry in his search bar. It took only a small tweak—changing “Active” to “Deceased”—and he hit the search button.

Well, that made things somewhat easier. Only four Phillip Dartmoors popped up this time, as he’d specified government service. Phillip Dartmoor had to be somehow associated with this Project Omaha that the Gio Pete’s menu had made him flash on. Which eliminated two of the Phillip Dartmoors on the list, as they had perished from old age.

Two Phillip Dartmoors left. Chuck brought up the first, and frowned. Died young, he noted. Age twenty-four. He would be twenty-eight now, Chuck thought, if he had lived.

The other had died at thirty-six. Also young. He’d died the year before, as an officer in the Army Reserve.

Just as Chuck hit “print” for both entries, his cell phone jangled. He picked it up without checking the view-screen. “City Morgue, you kill ‘em, we chill ‘em.”

“Well, that’s certainly…morbid. Hey, little brother.”

Chuck sat up straighter in his seat. “Ellie! Hi. Ah, how are you? You doing okay?”

The last thing he expected was for his sister to chuckle at that. “I’m fine, worrywart.”

“Hey, that’s not fair because I’m pretty sure this is a matter where there’s a pot and there’s a kettle and one of them is black, but wait, that doesn’t matter. They both are.”

On the other end of the phone line, Ellie paused. “Chuck?”

“Yes?”

“You’re babbling.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “I know. It’s still a bad habit.”

“I can see that. I’m calling to find out how you are.”

“How _I_ am?” Chuck blinked a few times. “I’m not the one that got conscripted into government service today.”

“Ah. Sarah said you might see it like that.”

“How else am I supposed to see it?” Chuck pushed away from his computer and moved over to his bed, momentarily grateful that he’d cleared it of all files. He dropped onto the mattress and stared at his ceiling. “It’s my fault you’re stuck doing this.”

“Stuck?” Ellie asked. “Don’t look at it like that, Chuck. I’m finally getting that fellowship I’ve always wanted. This is a good thing.”

Chuck really didn’t think it was, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to articulate any of the reasons why he thought so. Mentioning even one aloud would be like hitting the dam with a wrecking ball, and they would all come pouring out in one desperate flood. So he just shook his head, even though his sister couldn’t see him.

Ellie didn’t seem fazed by his silence. “And Sarah told me all about what you can do with the Intersect,” she went on. “She made it sound like something out of one of those weird movies you always used to scare yourself with late at night.”

Chuck had to laugh, though he didn’t quite feel the humor. “Some days, yes.”

“It’ll be really fascinating to finally have a legitimate excuse to poke through your head, little brother,” Ellie went on. “I’ve always said you were special, and now somebody’s willing to pay me to prove it.”

Though he smiled, there were some things he couldn’t get past yet. “You’re not worried?”

“About what?”

“That they’re going to eat up your whole life?”

“No, I don’t think they will.” He couldn’t hear what Ellie was doing, but he imagined that she was sitting at her kitchen counter with a mug of her evening tea, phone held between her ear and her shoulder while she did something else with her hands. Maybe she was painting her fingernails. Or writing a shopping list. With Ellie, each was a strong possibility. “Sarah really made it sound like this Gwen Davenport is going to do everything she can to make sure I’m well-insured against any nefarious plans the government might have.”

This was quite a switch, Chuck thought, from the Ellie that had railed against the government that had taken away her younger brother.

“Not,” Ellie went on, clearly reading his mind as she always did, “that I’m going to forgive them for what they did to you. Ever. Dumping you in Switzerland with minimal contact is completely inhumane and I wish I knew who to sue about that.”

Switzerland? Oh, right. The cover story for Siberia.

“It wasn’t so bad there,” Chuck lied. “And, you know, it had advantages.”

“Like the Friedman Grant?”

Chuck smacked himself in the forehead. “How did you figure it out?”

“I didn’t. Sarah and I kind of did when she was helping me with my security paperwork this morning.” 

He needed to have a word with his blonde coworker the next time he saw her. 

“Were you ever going to tell me about it?” Ellie asked.

“Honestly?” Chuck shrugged, even though there wasn’t any way that Ellie could see him. “No.”

“I did think it was odd that there was a retroactive scholarship that I was eligible for, even though I wasn’t the top of my class and I didn’t apply. But Devon checked it out and said it was legitimate. How on earth—”

“Just some minor hacking,” Chuck said, hoping to distract her before she started asking more serious questions. He sighed and rubbed at a low-grade headache that had ebbed and flowed all evening. “Look, they paid me a good amount of money to stay at that place in Si—Switzerland. And there wasn’t anything I could really do with it, so I fudged a few things. I made up the grant, I stuck my third grade teacher’s name on it.”

“But paying off all of my student loans—”

“Since I had the scholarship, it wasn’t like I racked up that much debt at Stanford, and I wanted you taken care of.”

Ellie went quiet. For a few seconds, Chuck felt panic begin to claw through him. Was Ellie crying? He hated it when his sister even so much as teared up, which was pretty ridiculous, given that this was the woman that regularly sniffled while watching soap operas. He sat up, searching about for something to say, anything that would stop the tears.

But Ellie surprised him again. “Thank you,” she said, her voice quiet, but thankfully lacking that throaty quality that meant tears. “It was too much, but thank you.”

Chuck moved a shoulder. Setting up the faked scholarship and using all of his funds to pay off Ellie’s student loans hadn’t been enough, not when he should have been near her or at least been able to call her. But he couldn’t say that now, not when she was being so sincere. So he cleared his throat. “You’re welcome. I wanted you to be okay.”

“I’m okay,” Ellie said, her voice firm.

But for how long? How long before the government decided it was tired of having a human Intersect, and how long before said Intersect and his sister were tossed to the wayside? Or worse?

“Chuck?” Ellie asked when he didn’t reply. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you.”

“I’m okay,” Ellie repeated. “This is a good thing, me joining Prometheus. Okay? You’re not allowed to worry about this.”

“But I want to.”

“Well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it? C’mon, aren’t you happy to have Devon and me on the team?”

“Honestly?”

“If you say no, I’ll tell Devon not to stock cherry lollipops in his office in Castle.”

Chuck smiled. It appeared that his childhood sweet tooth really was going to haunt him, just like Ellie warned him it would. “Oh, come on, that’s fighting dirty.”

“Tough noogies, little brother.”

“You know, I’m more than six inches taller than you.”

“So?”

“So I’m not exactly your _little_ brother, am I?”

“Chuck, I made your Halloween costume every year until the tenth grade. You’ll always be my little brother.”

He had to think about that for a minute as he rested one hand behind his head as a pillow. “Well, okay. But only because that Green Arrow costume from the fourth grade was so spectacular.”

“I’m glad. I stayed up for three nights straight working on that one.” Ellie fell quiet. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, just a brief chance to stop and think. Chuck moved his attention to his ceiling, dimly lit because he only had his desk lamp burning. Finally, Ellie sighed. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes,” Chuck said, surprised at the answer.

“Good. I know it’s not going to be perfect right away, but I’m glad you’re feeling better. Now, you need to get some sleep.”

“Ellie—”

“Nuh-uh. Sarah said you were exhausted all day, and if I know you at all—which I do, thank you—you’re probably worse off than she was before I made her go sleep. Eight hours, Chuck, or I’ll dose you with a sedative.”

The thought of Sarah trying to face down Ellie in full mother bear mode made Chuck fight a grin as he promised Ellie he would sleep soon. They said their good-byes and hung up. Instead of rising from the bed and returning to his Phillip Dartmoor research, he just worked his other hand behind his head and crossed his feet at the ankles, staring up at his ceiling. He’d memorized the patterns and the shadows, but they seemed just a hair different from up here on his bed, so he took the time to categorize the differences as he thought about Ellie and her words.

She was scared. He’d heard that in her voice, however much she tried to hide it. But there had been genuine excitement, too, both about working on the Intersect and her fellowship, and getting to be a part of Chuck’s super-secret spy life. That would change once she got her hands on past mission files and learned that her little brother had been in danger, but until then…

He might as well take her advice. Before he fully realized it, Chuck’s eyes closed, and he fell asleep in his own bed for the first time in nearly a month.

**14 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS**   
**13:52 PST**

“Man, I love this system!” Chuck took a step back to admire his handiwork and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s just so _cool_. I mean, check this out.” He stretched forward with one arm and touched his fingers to the main screen, which took up half of the office’s wall. The icon nearest his fingertip immediately lit up, and on the screen to the right, a file opened. “So _freaking_ cool!”

Behind him, he heard Sarah’s suppressed chuckle. “You showed me that already.”

Chuck shot a grin over his shoulder. He knew he was acting like a kid on Christmas morning, but that didn’t matter. He and Sarah had finally hooked up the auxiliary monitors in one of Castle’s offices, and the operating system was like something out of a sci-fi film. Everything was controlled by a single touch: the ripple of a finger across a screen could manipulate, resize, open, close, alter, anything Chuck could possibly dream up.

Since it was still faster to input data with a keyboard, though, Sarah sat at the room’s only desk, typing away.

“Here,” she said, selecting a file with the laser pointer. Chuck twirled a finger to make the file spin. He all but heard Sarah’s indulgent eye-roll. “This one needs work.”

“Ah, September twenty-eighth,” Chuck said. “What about it?”

“We need to narrow down the time window, if we can.”

Chuck spread his fingers across the screen to enlarge the file. They’d been hard at work at transferring Chuck’s amassed data from the “Where’s Bryce?” board to much more advanced technology. Now it was just down to tweaking small details so that Sarah could officially helm that part of Operation Prometheus. 

“Our little jaunt on the ferry,” he recalled now, studying the data on the file. “And that sweet little bungalow. Too bad we couldn’t have stayed longer. How’d you score that, anyway?”

“I have my ways. Let’s see, I finished up my meeting with Randy around nine or so, and I got back around a quarter to ten. What time did you go to sleep?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe eight? Nine? I was a little out of it.”

“We’ll go with 8:30.” Sarah hit a few keys, swore under her breath at a typo, and fixed it. “Giving Bryce a window of an hour and fifteen minutes to sneak in and plant the menu on your nightstand.”

“Realistically, it would be an hour, tops. Bryce knows I wake up pretty easily in the first fifteen minutes after falling asleep.”

“Do you? Hmm.” Sarah adjusted the data on the file. “Okay.”

“Oh, that makes me remember: I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. How did you know about the perimeter sensors? You didn’t set them off when you came in that night.”

“You had the receiver dangling from the lampshade. I spotted it when I glanced in the window, and so I came in through the window. Simple.”

“Normally I clip it to a belt loop,” Chuck said, frowning as he studied the files splayed across the screens, “but I didn’t want to crush it in my sleep. That’s something I should work on in the design, I think.” As he spoke, he started tapping things on different screens, making things appear and disappear rapidly. In the back of his brain, he mused over the functionality of disguising the sensor receiver, while his fingers continued to race on.

Finally, Sarah moved around the desk and stepped up beside him. “What are you doing?”

“Connecting this room to Castle’s computer mainframe.”

“Really? Just like that?”

“Well, I memorized all of the codes, and…a-ha.” Chuck gave her a grin, but quickly returned his attention to the screens. “Now it’s all set, you can access any computer in here. See? Here’s mine.” He tapped an icon twice and swiped a palm across the screen to send it to the left-hand screen.

“Interesting.” Sarah squinted at the screen. “That’s quite the naming system you’ve got.”

“It works for me.” Chuck manipulated another screen to show Casey’s computer.

“It’s all letters and numbers. How do you make sense of it—what’s this?” Sarah stepped around Chuck and double-tapped a word processing document.

“Oh, that? What I remember from every flash I’ve had.”

“And it’s not even pass-coded?” Sarah slowly paged through the documents.

“Sure it is, but you’ve already got admin permissions for everything in this room. Oh, look at that. New message from Beckman.”

“Really?” Sarah didn’t look away from the file she was reading. In fact, her whole body had stopped moving. She was normally a very still sort of person, good at conserving energy when she needed to, so Chuck paid her no mind as he brought up the new missive from their boss and scanned through it. “What’s it say?”

“It’s the list she promised us yesterday. Possible Fulcrum leads.” Chuck opened the document and read through it, letting out a startled laugh. “Ha! She put Bryce on here. Do you think she’s growing a sense of humor because that would actually be—Sarah? What is it?”

She jerked on the spot. “What?” One hand stabbed out and closed the text document in front of her as she turned. “Nothing. Sorry, was just lost in thought. Any of those leads look promising?”

“Couple low-level politicians, oil magnate, some CEOs of…wow, really? Wil Wheaton is on the Fulcrum list?”

“Who’s Wil Wheaton?”

“Never mind. Oh, here’s a fun one,” Chuck said as Casey, scowling came into the “Where’s Bryce” Office. “Sergei Ezersky. Sounds Polish.”

“Russian,” Casey corrected, moving to Chuck’s other side and folding his arms.

Both Chuck and Sarah turned to him, eyebrows raised.

“You can tell because it’s a ‘y’ and not an ‘i.’” Casey gestured. “I came down to see if you received the email, but this answers my question for me. Did you flash?”

Chuck shook his head. “But if we’re going to start with anybody, I’d say this Sergei character seems the best bet.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It says here that he’s a cybernetic toymaker. Toy robots! How cool is that?” Chuck looked from one teammate to the other. “C’mon, awesome, right?”

Casey and Sarah exchanged a look. The former grunted, the latter shrugged. “It seems as good a place as any to start,” Sarah said. She patted Chuck on the shoulder. “Why don’t you get started on that? I’m going to go grab a water—you two want anything?” She left with the request to retrieve a coffee (black and bitter) and a Red Bull (which made her roll her eyes yet again).

The instant she was out of the room, Chuck moved over to the screen that showed his computer. “What are you doing now?” Casey said, a sigh evident in his tone.

“Nothing. Checking something.” Chuck opened the flash document, grateful that the program automatically opened documents to the last viewed page. Something about this file had made Sarah freeze up. He rubbed the side of his thumb against the screen and frowned at the page on screen. He’d told her back in Athens that he had flashed on Randall Kaiser, that the Intersect had told him all about Sarah’s odd albino Canadian ex-boyfriend. And she had a damn near perfect memory, so why would she react so strongly to this file now? He hit print and snatched the page from the printer tray before Sarah could come back in. “Guess it’s time to see why the government thinks a Russian toymaker is evil, huh?”


	25. Moose and Squirrel, Chuck and Sarah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny.” — _Isaac Asimov_

**18 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**ESTATE OF SERGEI EZERSKY**   
**01:27 PST**

“That’s it,” Chuck said. “I’m convinced. This guy is evil.”

“Still no access?”

“What the hell’s taking you so long, Bartowski?”

Chuck wriggled so that he could touch his finger to the button on his earpiece, activating the comm. It was hard to move around in such a confined space, and he banged his elbow because of it. It made him a little grouchier as he answered Casey’s demand. “This guy has the security system from hell, okay? Actually, no. Satan wishes he had a system like this, if only to keep the politicians out.”

“Uh-huh. You promised me ten minutes. It’s been fourteen. Why aren’t you through yet?”

Casey just seemed to get more and more impatient by the day. Or, Chuck thought, he had since the intel disk lost to Bryce at Stanford had shown up in Casey’s prized Crown Vic, taped to the steering wheel, two days before. The car was at the NSA cleaners’, the disk was on its way to DC, and the team was currently running an op on the Malibu estate of one Sergei I. Ezersky. Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Casey was fuming in the back of a van a block away from Ezersky’s estate while Sarah and Chuck were back behind the estate at the security console, doing their damndest to break into said estate.

It wasn’t going according to plan.

“Am I going to have to call the local Nerd Herd to get this done right, Bartowski?” Casey went on. “Get your ass in gear!”

“He’s working on it, Casey,” Sarah said. She was standing watch over the console, which was a waist-high, silver box that Chuck could half wriggle into. She wore coveralls and a gimme cap that declared her a city worker. Even though she had a clipboard (and a very handy gun), Chuck didn’t actually think the disguise was all that necessary. No city worker was going to be lurking on an upper-class Malibu street after one in the morning on a Saturday night. Especially not a city worker that looked like Sarah Walker. It made him feel less guilty about stripping his own coveralls to the waist so that his black tactical suit showed through. He was buried in the security console from the waist up, trying to literally hack it from the inside. It had taken a blowtorch and some creative thinking to get that far, even. Sergei Ezersky really seemed to care about his security.

“Well, tell him to work faster.”

Chuck rolled his eyes and tweaked a wire to the device he’d cobbled together. Even though they were on a severe time limit, he pushed himself out of the console and sighed up at Sarah. “No offense,” he said after he’d shut off his comm link, “but I’m starting to regret that you won the coin toss to be the one to go into the estate with me. He really doesn’t wait very well, does he?”

“Shh.” Sarah gave him an aggrieved look and pointed at her open comm unit.

“Hey, Casey,” Chuck said at it, and ducked back into the console.

“Hey, CIA, here’s an idea: this goes faster if you quit making googly eyes at the blonde and get your bony ass in gear!”

It would go faster without a pissed off NSA agent buzzing in his ear the whole time, but Chuck knew better than to point that out. So he activated his comm unit and started humming _Old King Cole_.

Sarah booted him gently on the ankle. He shrugged.

Another two minutes ticked by, every second tolling in his ears like an insane gong. Their intel on Ezersky placed him out of town and the estate empty, but every moment that it took him to bypass the security was a moment in which they were in danger of being discovered. Another moment that they were out in the open, with all of that space and _danger_ and the possibility of bullets and bad guys and gunfights and—

Sarah kicked him again. His breathing didn’t slow. She was the one most in danger, standing out there without even a Kevlar vest to protect her.

A second later, he felt her kneel down next to him, and lean into the console. Even though the box was open, save for some computer wiring and the access screen inside, he was already taking up most of the space. Sarah joining him pressed them close together, but she didn’t seem to notice even when he tensed. Her face just over his, she placed a hand over his headset mic. “Keep it together.”

Chuck’s breathing obediently slowed. Sarah waited ten intense, throbbing seconds, her eyes burning and glinting in the reflection of the mini-laptop he’d wedged into the console with him. She dared him to look away.

He couldn’t. Especially after the first couple of seconds had elapsed and he realized that she was now pushed against him far more intimately than she’d ever been before, a tight fit in such a confined space. Sure, there had been that cuddling in the hayloft when she’d used him as a human pillow, but it didn’t match _this_ sort of bodies pressing together, lines and limbs perfectly matched. Heat, a searing red burn, started roiling through his middle, seeping outward to his limbs and fingers and toes.

“You good?” Sarah asked.

Chuck didn’t trust his throat to work with all of the saliva suddenly pooled in his mouth, so he nodded.

“Good.” Sarah tried to wiggle out. It didn’t quite work: she ended up elbowing him in the ribs and smacking her head on the top of the console. They both swore.

“What’s going on out there?” Casey demanded.

“Nothing—”

“Dropped something—”

Sarah managed to extricate herself from the console without further disaster. His whole body on fire, Chuck took a deep breath and wondered what the hell that had been about. Sure, it had held off a panic attack, but still—what the _hell_? Why had Sarah done that? Right now, she was “Mission Mode Sarah,” as Bryce had once coined it when Chuck had been the tech support to the Larkin-Walker Wonder Team: focused, tense, less playful than usual. But none of that explained why she would just break her guard duty to come inside and climb on top of him like that, even if it _had_ stopped a panic attack. 

He forced himself to focus back on the matter at hand. His research on the system had pointed out a glitch in the OS, but a very minor one that shifted and varied depending on the user specs. It was taking him a lot longer to find than he’d anticipated, which was more than evidenced by Casey’s growls.

“Are you any closer?” Casey demanded. “Because another five minutes and I’m scrapping this op.”

“I told you it was going to take some finessing—”

“Five minutes.”

“Casey, it’s not a magic solution, I can’t just snap my fingers and—oh, got it.”

“What?”

“Just a couple of—yep, we’re in.” Chuck booted up the programs he’d installed on the laptop for just this purpose and twisted around so that he could set his watch. “Everybody ready?”

“Ready,” Casey confirmed to the van. “Call signs only at this point, team.”

“All right, gear up, Sa—ah, Guinevere, we’ve got thirty minutes, starting…now.” 

He hit the return key on the laptop and pushed himself out of the console. He blinked up at Sarah. “How’d you—whoa. Do you have powers of super-stripping because, geez—”

“Hurry up.” Sarah, her coveralls gone and replaced by the skin-tight burglary/tactical suit beneath, pulled a balaclava down over her forehead. Chuck stumbled as he kicked free of his coveralls. They were going in light, with only a few weapons between them, the computer gear Chuck would need, and a lightweight rope. Together, they headed through the darkness.

“You ready for this?” Sarah asked as they skirted the high wall surrounding the estate.

“I think so.”

Sarah gave him a skeptical look. 

“Yeah, well, you know, my wall-scaling days aren’t _that_ far behind me, you know.” Chuck pulled the balaclava down over his face. When Sarah stopped at the pre-arranged breach point and knelt, cupping her hands together, he raised both eyebrows. “Uh…”

“C’mon. We don’t have a lot of time, and I can handle your weight. This way, you can pull me over.” Her eyes met his and left no room for resistance, so Chuck just gave a micro-shrug, stepped into her cupped palms, and managed, on the first try, to grab the top of the wall. He yanked himself up, grunting, and immediately slithered around on his belly to help Sarah up. 

She simply leaped, grabbed, and pulled herself up. She lowered herself just as quickly over the other side, apparently trusting that Chuck would follow. He landed a great deal more clumsily and glanced around the well-manicured lawn, all rolling hills in the darkness, before he took off after Sarah. 

“You said no dogs, right?” he asked, just in case. It seemed like no huge estate like this should come without dogs. 

“No dogs.”

Ahead of them, the house loomed, the light stucco walls gleaming despite the darkness. The lights had been snuffed since the master was away on a business trip in Paris, so there was only the automated lights in the Olympic-sized pool lighting them from below as they ran across a terrace and through an outdoor kitchen.

“Bourne,” Sarah said as they ran, “we’re at the house. How long until—”

Chuck leaned around her and pulled open the back door.

“The doors are open?” Sarah finished, and gave him a wry look through the balaclava.

“Unlocked them from the console,” Chuck said.

Sarah led the way into a foyer more opulent than any he’d ever seen. Not that Chuck had had much opportunity to visit—or burgle, in this case—the homes of the wealthy, but he still figured that this place had to be pretty swanky, considering. Darkness shrouded the entire room in purple, moonlight silvering everything in a gradient. During the day, the place must flood with daylight, but right now, everything from the raftered ceiling to the marble floors felt echo-y and empty, and vaguely wrong. Of course, that could have more to do with the fact that he and his partner were currently dressed like cat burglars…and there was that little breaking and entering thing to contend with. They had false IDs and badges just in case, but the principle remained.

“Computer’s up on the second floor,” Sarah whispered, pausing at the entry into the rest of the house. “This way.”

The house opened up from the foyer into a huge expanse of space. Tall ceilings, airy rooms. Of course, the interior decorator had seen fit to fill the space with as little as possible. Chuck caught glimpses and impressions of rooms, all unfilled with minimalist and Spartan furniture, only a few throw rugs to warm up the cold flooring. There was no personality in the house at all. Had they broken into the wrong house? He hoped not. That security system had been hellacious to crack. 

“In here.” Sarah checked a room, deemed it clear, and pulled Chuck in. The room—larger than the entirety of the Bachelor Pad—contained only a desk and a computer.

“Seems to like the bare approach, doesn’t he?” he asked, yanking a palm-sized, flat object out of the holster at his waist. “You’d think a toymaker would have more clutter, right? Kind of like the king in ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,’ you know?”

“I’m sorry, Chitty Chitty what?”

“You never saw that movie growing up?” Chuck knelt by the computer so that he could affix the cloner to its side. When he glanced over at Sarah, she had her back to him, watching out the doorway. He shrugged and got back to work setting up a little stand and transmission dish that could both be folded down into smaller items for convenience. “Probably for the best. I still kind of have nightmares about it.”

Again, no answer.

Chuck hooked the cloner into the computer through a Firewire cable, hooked the transmitter dish up to both, and touched his comm unit to activate it. “Hey, Ca—Bourne, how’s it going?”

“Where are you?”

“We’re in the room, and I’ve got the cloning device all set up. You ready in there?”

He heard the tapping of fingers on a keyboard. “Assuming you’ve done this right.”

“Let’s just assume when it comes to computers, I’m awesome, and leave it at that. Now, hit that key I told you to hit, and let’s do this thing.”

Casey let out a little grumbling, growling noise that translated assent.

Chuck leaned down and flipped a small switch on the side of the cloning device. He hit a secondary timing function on his watch, noting that they still had twenty seven minutes before his hole in the security system closed. “Transmitting now.”

“Downloading,” Casey said after a couple of seconds. The device would create a mirror image of Sergei’s hard drive that Chuck would be able to crack on his own time, rather than worrying about computer security while they were on the estate. There had been no outright indicators in Sergei Ezersky’s financial data or schedule that he might be part of a super-secret underground government group, so chances were, they were on a wild goose chase tonight. But it was the only lead they had until Bryce decided he was tired of playing a ghost.

So Chuck sat back and prepared to wait for the data to finish being sent to a laptop he’d set up in the van. As he did so, and Sarah kept her vigil at the door, he studied the room. It was so…boring. Empty. It made absolutely no sense, he thought again, that a toymaker lived here. Toymakers were supposed to be eccentrics, fascinated by the odd and the absurd. As an eccentric, Sergei Ezersky was just a complete disappointment.

Chuck caught something out of the corner of his eye and frowned. “Hey, what’s that?”

Sarah didn’t glance over. She had her gun out, at rest but still ready to fire. “What’s what?”

“I think there’s something in the floor over here.” Curious now, Chuck rose to his feet and crossed to the far corner. He ignored Sarah’s warning not to touch anything—there wasn’t anything to touch besides the computer and he’d already pawed all over that—and knelt, his gloved hands tracing a minute crack in the floor. The crack spanned along until it intersected with another, which in turn moved perpendicular and met a third. That led to a fourth, finally forming… “A trapdoor.”

“What?” Sarah finally looked away from the door. “I told you not to touch anything!”

“It’s a trapdoor,” Chuck repeated, his voice breathless. “The man has an honest-to-God trapdoor in his house! Ha! I knew he couldn’t have been that boring!”

He felt around for a catch.

“Chuck!” After giving the hallway one final glance to apparently make sure assassins hadn’t discovered them, Sarah hurried over. “What part of ‘don’t touch anything’ did you not—”

“Oh, c’mon. Don’t tell me you’re not curious.”

“The plan is simple. Let’s stick to it—”

“The blueprints for this house said nothing about a trapdoor. And c’mon, if I’m really Sergei Ezersky and part of some mysterious and ambiguous government group, where am I going to hide my secret information? A computer out in the open or a secret _room_?” Chuck gave her one final “get real” look that he wasn’t sure she could see through the balaclava and twisted the handle he’d jimmied out of the floor. The door opened easily.

“One condition,” Sarah said.

“Name it.”

“I go first.” When Chuck opened his mouth to protest, Sarah held up a finger. “You’ve got the computer in your brain. I don’t. Ergo, I go first.”

Chuck sighed. “Fine.”

Sarah hit her comm button. “Bourne, change of plans. Stargazer found a trapdoor—we’re assessing the situation.”

“Fine. Transmission’s at forty-seven percent. Make it fast. And don’t get shot.”

“Thanks for the tip, Bourne.”

Sarah and Chuck glanced down through the trapdoor, pulling their goggles down over their eyes as they did so. Even with night-vision, the trapdoor’s contents didn’t reveal much—just a dark hole with a metal ladder leading down. Chuck switched his goggles over to heat vision. It seemed to keep the same ambient warmth of the rest of the house. He glanced over at Sarah, who was painted in hot reds, yellows, and oranges, an interesting look for her. “Ladies first.”

“Get your gun out and keep it out until I get to the bottom,” Sarah said. “You cover me, and then I’ll cover you.”

“Sometimes literally,” Chuck said, and Sarah gave him yet another aggravated look as she hurriedly switched off her mic. Or at least he thought it was aggravated. It was kind of hard to tell with the facemask and the goggles. 

He cleared his throat as Sarah climbed down into the floor. “What was up with that?”

“What?” Her head and shoulders disappeared below the floor. With heat vision still on, he could watch her body, colors slithering over each other like a kaleidoscope, as she climbed down the ladder. He saw the colors shift again as she looked up at him. “Are you looking out or are you watching me?”

“Oops, sorry.” Chuck dug out the tranq gun and pointed it toward the door.

A few seconds later, he heard, “Okay, it’s all clear—wow.”

“What is it? What’s going on?”

“Um, just get down here and see for yourself.”

Chuck glanced once more toward the door and holstered the gun before he scrambled down. “The thing, back there. In the console. You kind of climbed on top of me. Why did you do that?”

“Transmission’s at sixty-seven percent,” Casey, who couldn’t hear them, said.

“Thanks.” Sarah hit the off button on her earpiece. “Chuck, is now really the time?”

“I was just curious—whoa.” At the bottom of the ladder, Chuck turned, and froze. They had descended into a room that wasn’t terribly large, just long. Heat-vision gave him readings: the room’s depth, width, height, ambient temperature. It was, simply put, a vault of some type, the floor lit up with the gentle glow of light panels, ringed by uniform shelves that lined each wall. Tiny pinpricks of heat glowed red at equal distances on the shelves.

“It’s light enough in here, you don’t need the goggles,” Sarah said.

Obediently, Chuck pushed them off of his eyes. “I knew it!” he said once he’d blinked a couple of times. He stepped away from the base of the ladder and into the vault, ignoring the hand Sarah put out to stop him. “I _knew_ this guy had to have something interesting about his place!”

Robots. His geek brain nearly let out a yodel at the sight of them, lining all of the shelves in neat rows. They were present in all forms and sizes, categorized by size and type. The larger robots sat on the bottom shelf, shaped like animals: dogs, cats, a T-Rex, a Triceratops, some Velociraptors.

“Well, he obviously likes dinosaurs,” Chuck said, ignoring the fact that he was stating the obvious. He crouched down to poke at a lifelike Brontosaurus.

Sarah grabbed his wrist. “What are you doing?”

“I—”

“Do _not_ touch anything.”

“But—”

“You said if he had data on Fulcrum, it would be down here. Let’s find it and get out of here.” Sarah’s tone said what her words didn’t: and quit acting like a kid in a candy store.

“All right, all right, yeesh.” Chuck rolled his eyes and backed away from the dinosaurs. He moved deeper into the vault, eyeing the shelves at shoulder height that contained the medium-sized robotics. These looked almost like the demented crossbreed of rabbits and grasshoppers. They had rectangular bodies, topped with heads shaped vaguely like coffee beans. Made of a black matte metal, they sat on powerful haunches, wide-toed feet. They should have looked angular and evil, but smooth lines all over their torsos, faces, and snouts mellowed them somewhat, possibly aided by the fact that their ocular lights weren’t glowing. Chuck resisted poking one to see how solid it was only because he knew Sarah would smack his hand if he did.

“I think all of these are on,” he said, though the robots weren’t making any whirring noises that signified power.

“Why do you say that?”

“Heat sensors were picking them up. I’d say they’re motion activated, but they don’t seem to react.” Chuck waved a hand in front of one of the robo-rabbits just to be sure. He turned to check the creatures on the top shelf, which looked a bit like Princess Leia’s thermal detonator with legs and minus the gold lamé paint.

“Look out!”

Instinct made him duck mid-turn. He felt the breeze of something whoosh right over his head, ruffling his hair as it passed. He dropped to one knee, whipping the tranq gun out and ready to take down all manner of assassins, security personnel, or ninjas.

There was nothing there.

“Wh-what?”

“Chuck!” Sarah launched into a slide to steal third, landing right next to him. She yanked him down and pointed. “Look up.”

“Holy—”

At some point, a panel in the ceiling had slid open. It must have done so silently. Chuck figured that being taller than most of the population, he really had the market cornered on knowing what was happening on most ceilings, so the room must be well-oiled among other things. That wasn’t the important part. No, that would be the robotic arm that extended from the ceiling without even the telltale whirring of gyroscopes and motor functions. It was painted a dark orange, almost a burnt sienna, and the hand at its end was a three-pronged tool. 

Some kind of robotic Igor? Either way, it swayed above their heads, unable to reach low enough to attack either of them again.

“That,” Chuck breathed, “is so _cool_!”

Both he and Sarah jumped when words rumbled through the room, the deep bass rattling the light panels below their feet. It took Chuck a second to realize that the reason he couldn’t understand the words was that they were in Russian.

“What’s it saying?” he hissed at Sarah.

“Shh.” She listened intently for a second. “It wants us to identify ourselves.”

“You, uh, know the Russian word for ‘friend,’ right?”

“I know a lot more than that.” Sarah toggled her comm on. “Bourne, we may have a problem.”

“What did the geek do now?”

“The trapdoor led to some sort of lab-slash-storage facility, and the room knows we’re here.”

“The _room_ knows you’re there?”

“It’s asking us to identify ourselves.” 

“My suggestion, Guinevere? Lie.”

“Gee, thanks. No way I could’ve come up with that one on my own. How much do we have on the transmission?”

There was a pause as Casey checked the screen. “Eighty-six percent.”

“All right. Leaving comm open.”

Chuck leaned over to whisper to Sarah, though he was pretty sure the room could probably pick up all audible words. “Maybe you should answer the disembodied voice, since my Russian is limited to imitating Boris and Natasha.”

Sarah gave him a blank look.

“You know, Moose and—you know what? Not really the time.”

Sarah evidently agreed. She let out a spate of Russian so quickly that Chuck’s eyebrows went up. The voice demanding their identity stopped mid-sentence, falling so abruptly silent that Chuck jumped.

Nothing happened.

“What’d you say?” Chuck asked, glancing around to make sure no other robot arms had descended from the ceiling. The one that had almost taken his head off at the neck stopped swaying gently.

“I identified us as friends of Doctor Sergei Ezersky, and that we intend no harm.”

Chuck glanced around. “Uh, Sarah, not to point out the obvious, but we’re in a room full of robots. I’m not exactly worried about us being the ones to do harm.”

“Not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m pretty damn dangerous.”

“You know what? I think I got that. Why isn’t it saying anything?”

“I don’t know. I’m not the computer guy here. Why isn’t it saying anything?”

“Um, maybe it’s analyzing?”

“God,” Casey grumbled from the van, “the CIA has never made me want to shoot myself in the head quite this much before.”

Chuck felt that was a bit unfair, as he was quite certain he’d annoyed Casey far more on many other occasions, but he didn’t say anything. It didn’t matter, anyway. The room began talking again, the light panels once more flickering and rumbling.

“Voice print isn’t a match,” Sarah said, her lips tightening. “I think it’s time—”

She froze. Across the shelves, one by one, little lights began to switch on. The chest lights on the mid-sized robots all glowed blue, their little eyes lighting up with green. Chuck felt a very severe sense of _uh-oh_ begin to spread through his middle. Along the bottom shelf, the dinosaurs remained silent and lifeless, but the twenty or so middle-sized robots more than made up for that loss.

As one, every single robot on the middle shelf turned its head.

Forty little green lights narrowed in on Chuck and Sarah.

“Wow,” Chuck said despite himself. “It really is just like in the movies.”

Bad idea, he thought a split-second later when forty little green lights slowly turned a very scary shade of red.

“Chuck?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah?”

“Run!”


	26. Overwhelmed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. — _Mark Twain_

**18 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**ROBOT VAULT  
01:43 PST**

Chuck didn’t need to be told twice. Maybe it was the shelves full of robots that activated themselves, maybe it was the creepy red eyes staring beadily at him, maybe it was the robot arm dropping in from the ceiling, or maybe it was the fact that one simply didn’t say no to Sarah Walker, but at her command, Chuck surged to his feet.

He’d had better ideas.

The top of his head collided solidly with the robot arm that had nearly decapitated him earlier. White sparks scattered across his vision. He crashed forward.

Sarah was quicker on her feet than him, thankfully. In a blink, she maneuvered herself between him and the floor, shoving until he was semi-upright. “C’mon!” She yanked on his arm and he had no choice but to go along, even in his dazed state. She half-shoved him, half-pulled him to the ladder.

“What’s going on?” Casey demanded.

“The robots are awake!” Sarah tried to push Chuck up the ladder.

He shook his head to clear it and decided to get with the program, grabbing clumsily for the rung. He glanced over his shoulder.

None of the robo-rabbits had moved.

“Uh, Sarah?” he asked.

“What? Get up there!”

“The robots aren’t moving.”

“Robots?” Casey demanded.

“Yeah, the vault contains a bunch of toy robot prototypes and something Sarah said woke them—”

“Hey!”

“But they’re not moving now.”

Even if they weren’t moving, the robots _had_ tracked his and Sarah’s movement across the vault. Twenty little coffee-bean heads swiveled on their bodies so that forty little eyes could watch the two spies run across the vault. It was almost like the robots were waiting for something to happen.

Uh-oh.

“I’m sorry,” Casey said, and it sounded like he might be laughing. “Did you say you’re running from toy robots?”

Sarah and Chuck exchanged a look as laughter burst out over the comm link.

“It’s much creepier in person, trust me,” Chuck said stiffly.

“Oh, I’m sure it is.”

“Anyway, they’re not moving now, but we should probably—”

He’d spoken too soon. In the middle of his sentence, the robot on the end of the shelf nearest them seemed to quiver all over—right until it launched itself into the air with a little springing noise. It landed on the ground and righted itself.

Chuck and Sarah stared.

The robot paused.

Its old neighbor jumped and landed just as easily.

The first robot began a silent waddle across the floor. Maybe it was his addiction to overly cheesy science-fiction movies, but that seemed a bit unfair to Chuck. Tiny toy robots should make sounds like wind-up toys. Otherwise, how was one to know when it was coming?

“They can jump?” he asked Sarah, just to make sure his head-butt against the robot arm hadn’t caused permanent damage.

“They can jump,” Sarah said. “Up!”

Faced with manic hopping robots, Chuck believed there wasn’t much of a choice but to listen to his partner. He raced up the ladder. “Casey, how long left on that transmission?” he asked as he moved out of the way to let Sarah up.

“It’s at ninety-two percent. What’s going on now?”

“Well, we left the insanely cute tinker toy army of death in the vault and Sarah’s shutting the door now…” Chuck trailed off when Sarah, trying to close the trapdoor, shook her head. “Or not. What’s going on?”

“It’s not shutting.” 

“Ninety-four percent.”

“Why isn’t it closing? It opened easily enough.”

Sarah gave him a look that was probably supposed to be annoyed. The facemask dampened the effect. “And I’m supposed to know that how?”

“Good point.”

“Ninety-six percent,” Casey said.

Chuck moved to a prudent distance away from the trapdoor, not commenting at all when Sarah joined him. He was going to have nightmares about the silent, eerie way those robots had begun crawling toward them, and he actually liked that sort of thing, so he couldn’t fault the super-spy beside him in the slightest. In fact, he turned to her and shrugged. “We’re probably okay. There’s no way—”

_Poing. Poing._

“They can jump this high,” Chuck finished, and turned his head very slowly.

As he did so, four more robo-rabbits jumped through the hole in the floor.

As one, they all began crawling toward the spies.

“Casey?” Sarah demanded, her voice going a little higher as she and Chuck backed away. “What’s that transmission at?”

“Ninety-seven percent. Why?”

“We’ve got company!”

“Robot company or human company?”

“Robot!”

“And creepy as hell,” Chuck added, still backing away as even more of the robo-rabbits leaped through the trapdoor. Damn, those suckers could jump.

Sarah reached out and blindly fumbled for his arm. “Chuck, go get the cloner and transmitter.”

“It’s not done—”

“ _Now_!”

Though he wanted to point out that the robo-rabbits of doom hadn’t actually harmed them or made any overtures of doing so yet, Chuck knew better than to argue with that tone. He sidled off toward the computer, gulping when half of the little coffee-bean heads followed his progress. “Casey, hit ‘finalize.’”

“Okay. Done.”

Chuck yanked the Firewire cable out and stuffed it into his pocket. The cloner itself went into the holster easily, but he fumbled with folding down the transmitter dish, his fingers clumsy in his haste.

It probably wasn’t helped by the fact that the robots began to waddle toward him.

“Hurry,” Sarah said rather needlessly as Chuck doubled his efforts with the dish.

“What’s going on?”

“The robots are moving again.”

“Definitely time to go,” Chuck started to say, but he froze as the nearest robot to both of them stopped shuffling abruptly. Sarah, likewise, didn’t seem to be able to move. “Sarah? What’s it doing?”

“Why the hell do you think I would know these things?”

Another good point. The edge in her voice told him that she wasn’t really snapping at him: she was just as freaked out about all of this as he was, if not more. In a way, it was comforting to know that something could flap the unflappable Sarah Walker.

Of course, in another, larger way, it was not so comforting. After all, he and Sarah were currently in the same room as twenty—no, twenty four, Chuck corrected as four more robots joined their brothers in arms—of those somethings that had indeed freaked Sarah, a hardened CIA spy, out. He’d have to marvel later. Right now, he was too busy staring in horror as the nearest robo-rabbit shuddered. Silently, the head slid backward along its body, revealing a tiny panel on its chest where the head had been previously.

The panel opened without a noise.

Sarah figured out what the tiny bit of silver poking out of the robot was first. By the time Chuck’s brain registered what it was, Sarah had already hit him from the side in a tackle that would make a pro-footballer jealous.

The dart sailed harmlessly over their heads.

“Oh, that’s so not good,” Chuck breathed.

“Casey,” Sarah said as she and Chuck lurched to their feet and began racing for the door, “change of plans. Incoming!”

“I’ll have the van waiting. What are the robots doing now?”

“They’re armed!” They hit the hallway sprinting, which was like an invitation to the robots. Chuck could hear the _poing_ noise ricocheting off the walls. He glanced back, just once, and had the sudden urge to wet himself. Not only could the little buggers jump, but they could jump _fast_. 

He ran faster. After a look back, Sarah did the same.

“Armed how?” Casey demanded.

“Darts!”

“Poisonous?”

“Don’t know, don’t want to find out!” Sarah and Chuck took the stairs two at a time, racing by boring modern art.

 _Poing_. _Poing_.

“Oh, crap,” Chuck said as two of the army peeled away, landing at the base of the stairs. “Damn, these things make Olympic long jumpers look like a bunch of out-of-shape slackers.”

He nearly yelped when the heads receded and the chest panels opened. But there was nowhere to go but back up the stairs, where the nineteen other robots were currently hopping their way toward him. 

“That’s enough of that,” Sarah growled, yanking out her gun while still running.

The robot aiming its dart at Chuck vanished without even a skid mark.

“Okay, that’s hot,” Chuck said. 

Sarah took out another robo-rabbit and didn’t reply. They finished the sprint to the ground floor and raced down the hallway, aiming for the front door. Chuck could hear the deranged robot army poinging along behind them.

“You got enough bullets in that thing for all of them?” Chuck demanded as they made a right turn.

“Nope.” Sarah whipped a knife from her wrist-sheath and twisted so that she was running backwards. A split-second later, one of their pursuers fell over in a crackle of sparks, a knife jutting out of its torso. Mid-turn, Sarah pulled out another S&W and tossed it to Chuck. He caught it only by reflex. “Make yourself useful.”

“Sarah, this is a gun, I—”

“And they’re robots, not people. So shoot them.”

She wanted him to shoot tiny moving targets while running full-speed through a dark house with his night-vision goggles on his forehead rather than over his eyes. Oh yeah, he thought. Piece of cake.

Not.

He felt something clip the top of his ear, bringing on a surprising burst of bright red pain. “Ow!”

“What? What is it?”

“They’re shooting at me!” 

“Shoot back!” Casey, from the van, felt the need to add his two cents.

They didn’t have a choice, Chuck saw. Even as he and Sarah ran full-out, the robo-rabbits kept up. One hopped clear over the spies and hit the ground a good ten feet in front of them with a landing that even the Russian judge would have to give a perfect ten. A second joined it. A third. A fifth. A tenth.

“Shoot, Chuck!” Sarah shouted, her arm swinging up to do the same.

“This is like the deadliest game of Whack-A-Mole ever,” Chuck muttered, but he obediently aimed and squeezed off a shot at one of the robots aiming at Sarah. “Hey! I hit one!”

It was like Duck Hunt, he thought, automatically moving so that he was back to back with Sarah. He let her take out the robots between them and the door, as she was a better shot, while he focused on the robots circling behind them. At least they were slow to take aim—

“Ow!” A sharp prick in the meaty part of his calf made him slap at the wounded site. “What the—ow!” Another dart hit him just below the ribcage. “Damn, that stings!”

Behind him, he heard Sarah’s sharp intake of breath, a sign that she had been hit. She growled something that was probably an expletive and took out two more robots with a single shot. Chuck wasn’t even sure it was possible even though he had just seen it happen out of the corner of his eye.

“Casey, we’re hit,” Sarah said as Chuck took careful aim.

He missed completely. He blamed it on the fact that the room jittered.

Not just shook. The room itself actually started doing something not commonly seen outside of tap-dancing routines or—

“Earthquake!” Chuck yelped.

“What are you talking about?”

How did she not feel that? How on earth could she ignore the rattling walls or the fact that the two boring pieces of furniture in the room with them were dancing? The floor vibrating under his sneakers? How could she completely miss all of that?

So he tried to grab her shoulder and swing her around, to _show_ her that the room was indeed doing a very complex version of the rumba. 

He forgot about Mission Mode Sarah.

“Look out!” She shot out her left hand and caught him perfectly between the neck and shoulder, shoving him down. He took a knee even as Sarah’s right hand swung around in an arc, taking out robot minions one shot at a time. The logical part of Chuck’s brain began to count the foes, which was admittedly easier to do since he was so much closer to them on the floor.

The rest of him just wondered why they weren’t shaking. And why Sarah was so insistent on fighting off their tiny enemies when they clearly had bigger problems. Like the house coming down around their ears.

The robot nearest Chuck prepared to fire. He lunged forward, grabbed it, and hurled it like a softball. It smacked into the wall with a scatter of sparks and fell to the rumbling ground. “Earthquake!” Chuck shouted again, now that that problem was out of the way.

Sarah ignored him to keep shooting. Oh, right. She wasn’t from California. She wouldn’t know what to do in an earthquake. No time to explain, Chuck thought as the walls began to jump around like the Harlem Globetrotters.

He did the only thing he could think of: he shoved his shoulder into Sarah’s abdomen, surged to his feet, and ran for it, Sarah over his shoulder.

“Chuck, what the fu—”

“Earthquake!” Chuck kicked a robot out of the way, ignoring the sting in his thigh from its buddy’s dart. “Got to get you safe!”

“Chuck—put me _down_ —”

“Not until you’re safe!” Heedless of the robots hop-hopping their way behind him, Chuck raced through the house. Earthquake protocol dictated getting to the nearest doorway, but this wasn’t some measly little three point oh earthquake. This was like the Big One, the earthquake set on making California its own nation. The only doorway in the house that could possibly be safe enough was the front door with its fortified arch. Chuck sprinted there now, bobbing and weaving as the floor rumbled and tossed below his feet like an angry predator.

And why the hell was it suddenly so hot in the house? Seriously, had the earthquake opened up a crack in the floor that would also serve as ventilation for Hell? Sweat sprouted all over his body, and each breath felt like sucking on an exhaust pipe. He pushed on.

Sarah was also not helping matters. For one thing, she wouldn’t make a good hostage: she wriggled and struggled and hit him with the sides of her fist, demanding that he let her down. When he only tightened his grip, she started swearing, and not just in English. He caught some Russian—fitting, given that they were being chased by maniacal little Russian robots—and Spanish, possibly Italian and something that may have been Urdu.

He crossed the foyer in three long strides, stumbling a little when the earthquake tossed a particularly nasty tremor his way, and dropped Sarah on her feet. “There. Satisfied?”

“What the hell did you do that for?”

“Earthquake!” Chuck turned to point the very obvious rocking of the earth out, and yelped. “Robots! Robots!”

Sarah shot at one, cursed when the slide on her gun stayed back, and grabbed the gun out of Chuck’s hand. She took out two more in quick succession and yanked open the front door. “Go!”

“Sarah, it’s an earthquake, you shouldn’t go outside in an—”

Sarah pushed him through the door. Chuck stumbled and nearly took a facer down the stairs. He lunged for a pillar and held on for dear life, praying that the shaking would just _end_ already. This had to be the longest earthquake ever.

After a couple more shots, he heard Sarah stagger out after him and slam the door behind her.

Not fast enough, unfortunately. A lone robo-rabbit hopped through. Chuck stared blearily at it, wondering why the earthquake currently shaking him to pieces wasn’t tossing it around like a hipster in a hurricane. He almost opened his mouth to ask.

The gunshot startled him. One blink, and the robo-rabbit had vanished. Pieces of it clattered onto the front walk.

Chuck clutched the pillar tighter.

“What the blazes is actually going _on_ out there?” Casey demanded. “Did you two just launch a full-scale war against little robots, Walker?”

Sarah shuffled over to pry Chuck away from the pillar. He ignored her. No way was he going anywhere until the lawn stopped moving like an angry ocean and the earth stopped shaking, even though it was so hot outside that he was half-convinced he’d somehow landed on Tatooine. “Yes,” she said as she tugged on Chuck’s arm with a shaking hand, “and they hit us with some sort of drugged…”

Her eyes rolled back into her head.

Her body hit the front porch with a _thud_.

“Sarah!” Chuck let go of the pillar to lurch toward her.

Bad idea. His vision did one dangerous pinwheel around and settled firmly so that the world was upside down. He fell to his knees and tried not to lose his dinner right then and there. He’d never liked the Tilt-A-Whirl. 

“Chuck, what just happened out there?” Casey demanded. It sounded like he might be shouting down a very long tunnel.

“Sorry, Case, I’m losing you,” Chuck said, and he promptly passed out right on top of Sarah. He’d feel bad about that later.

**18 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS**   
**19:03 PST**

He had no idea what was going on. One second before, Chuck was positive that he hadn’t existed. Or maybe he had always existed and this was just what being timeless felt like, but he doubted it. His mind had simply blinked into existence, fully formed, ready to take on a life ready-made for him. The problem was, he couldn’t seem to get _to_ that life. Everything felt separated from time and too slow besides, as if the fourth dimension had stopped working for him entirely.

Sensations trickled in, all hard-won. Somebody had glued his eyes shut and replaced his limbs with lead. Appropriately, his head now seemed to be roughly the size of a prizewinning pumpkin. His throat was sandpaper, his mouth an Oklahoma field in the middle of the Great Depression.

And he had yet to open his eyes. He wanted to—just like he wanted badly to know what was going on—but the connections between his brain and those muscles had withered and rusted with time, leaving him high and dry.

All he could do was make a whuffling little groan noise. At least he thought that was him. It was hard to be sure since his ears didn’t seem to want to work properly.

“Chuck?”

Something touched him. Was that his arm? It had been his arm once, so it probably still was. The touch was cool, soothing, but not as comforting at the voice.

A voice he had once been certain he would never hear again. Wait. When was that?

Where was he?

That must have come out as a question, because the second most majestic voice in the world spoke again. And it answered him.

“You’re in Castle, Chuck. C’mon, let’s see those pretty eyes of yours.”

“N’pretty,” Chuck mumbled as his mouth remembered how to work.

“Oh, come on, you know the girls in tenth grade voted yours the prettiest eyes in the school.”

They had also voted Morgan “Most Gnome-like,” so Chuck didn’t really give the girls of his past much credence.

Still, he obeyed Ellie, blinking his eyes open despite the glue frosting his eyelids. She hadn’t lied, he saw. That sheet metal roof, moodily lit in blue and purple, could be nowhere but in a super-secret underground facility. Or specifically, he saw as he looked around, the infirmary. It was still in the process of being set up, but it was unmistakable. Two cots had been brought into the tiny space in the meantime, and there were medical supplies and equipment in various states of being unpacked lying about. He was on the cot nearest the door, with Ellie leaning over him from a stool beside his bed.

He blinked at her a few times and tried to sit up. Ellie put a hand on his shoulder. “Nuh-uh, stay down. Get your bearings for a minute. You’re bound to be dizzy.”

“Wh’happened?”

“You and Sarah had a fun run-in with quite the nasty concoction of chemicals.” Ellie smiled, though it was strained.

“’M I okay?”

“Yeah, the drug faded pretty quickly, and we’ve been flushing out your system.” Ellie reached out and smoothed his hair back. With anybody else, Chuck would have flinched. “It’s still Sunday. You’ve been out for about fifteen hours, and as far as I can tell, you’re going to be fine. Whatever they hit you with has nothing on that famous Bartowski blood. But just to be sure, Devon’s at the hospital running some tox panels.”

Since concepts like pain were also returning to Chuck’s existence, and he felt vaguely like somebody had kicked him in the forehead a few times just for the fun of it, he only grunted. Had it always been this hot in Castle? Belatedly, he realized that he was covered in sweat.

“Sarah?” he asked, hoping that Ellie understood what he was asking, since his throat hurt too badly to talk much.

“She’s fine. She woke up awhile ago—she got a lighter dose than you did. Apparently she doesn’t have a target on her forehead.” Ellie flicked him gently on said body part. “Here, let’s get you sitting up so that you can sip this.” She helped Chuck lean back against the wall. He was grateful for its cooling sensation against his back. 

He was even more grateful, though, for the cup of water Ellie handed him. His hand shook a little as he sipped.

“All right,” Ellie said when he handed the cup of water back. “Let’s do the doctor thing.”

Chuck cleared the rust from his throat. “You’re loving this part.”

“Not when you’re hurting,” Ellie corrected. “I didn’t even get a chance to start poking through your head before you decided to hit it on some random Russian’s front porch.”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Chuck said, wincing as he felt around his forehead for a goose-egg. That certainly explained the headache.

Ellie pulled his hand away. “Any dizziness?”

“A little, but it’s going away.”

“Double-vision?”

“No.”

They ran through the checklist. “Why’m I so hot?” Chuck asked when Ellie was satisfied. He peeled his shirt away from his chest. Somebody had changed his clothes so that he was in one of his work-out shirts and sweatpants. He could only hope that it had been Awesome or Casey.

“It’s a residual effect of the drugs that were turning your system into their own personal rave.” Ellie rose and fetched a thermometer. Chuck obediently held it under his tongue, more than familiar with the routine. “Sarah had the same symptoms. It’ll fade when the drugs are completely out of your system, but until then, you’ll be a little warm.”

“Great.” It was hard to talk around the thermometer, but he always figured doctors were well versed in translating. “Do you mind if I…” He gestured at his shirt.

“Go ahead.”

Chuck pulled the T-shirt off and folded it in front of him. It didn’t cool him off as much as he’d hoped, unfortunately. He smiled when Ellie adjusted the thermostat. “Thanks.”

“I’ll just invest in a parka.” Ellie took the thermometer, frowned at the reading, and noted it down. “Now, let’s talk about what you remember.”

“Honestly? Not much.” Everything in his head felt a little blurry, which didn’t bode well for anything. He was probably on medical leave from flashing. Again. “It’s all fuzzy.”

“Hm. Last clear memory?”

“Getting out of the van with Sarah.” Casey had made a final jealous grunt that Sarah would be the one accompanying Chuck into the estate, but it hadn’t been jealousy to be in Chuck’s company. It had been envy that Sarah was the one getting to face more danger. “After that, it’s all a crap shoot.”

“Do you remember anything that happened in the estate?”

“Pieces.” He remembered the robo-rabbits. He’d never forget them, their eerie, silent way of moving, the way they’d hopped, the pain of the darts biting into his skin. He remembered how Sarah’s hand had trembled when she—when she’d what? She’d been trying to pull him away from something. A pillar. He’d been holding on pretty tightly, he recalled, though he had no idea why. Everything felt discordant and out of order, with rough edges that would never fit together seamlessly.

So he shook his head. “I don’t remember much, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s okay.” Ellie wrote something on her clipboard. “Sarah had the same problem.”

“Really?” That made him feel better. Or rather, less like a failure.

“I think it’s one of the effects of the drug. I’m not sure if that will go away or not when the drug is fully out of your system.”

The fact that he may not get those memories back should have frightened him. Instead, he almost felt like shrugging. “So it’s just like Sarah and I got drunk together, then?”

“Um, yes. I suppose.”

Before she could continue her questions, Sarah poked her head into Ellie’s office. She smiled when both Bartowskis glanced over at her. “Hey, you’re awake!”

“Oh, God,” Chuck groaned when her voice hurt his head, “she’s perky.”

“Ooh. Right. Sorry.” Sarah gave him a sheepish smile. “I’ll tone it down. How’s your head?”

Chuck waggled one hand and used the other to unfold his T-shirt. “How come you’re so upbeat?”

“I got hit less than you did.” After glancing at Ellie, apparently, for permission, Sarah came in and sat on the end of Chuck’s cot. She’d pulled on jeans and a blouse so that she looked absolutely normal, not remotely like somebody who had spent most of the day in a drug-induced coma. “And it passes quickly after you wake up. I was fine after I took a shower.”

Chuck closed his eyes and flushed at the quick flashback that went through his mind at the word “shower.” He drew the T-shirt on, hoping that the movement would hide the blush.

Ellie, always in doctor mode, picked up a second clipboard and noted something down as she moved over to the cabinet full of medical goodies that Chuck could learn to fear before long. “How’s the head, Sarah?”

“Almost back to normal.”

“The fever’s gone?”

“I think so.” Sarah eyed the thermometer that Ellie pulled out of the cabinet and sighed. “I don’t need that, I swear.”

“Indulge me.”

“She’s a lousy patient,” Chuck told Ellie with no small amount of glee. It was unfair that Sarah could look so composed when he felt like something Godzilla had stepped in.

“Oh, trust me, I already know.”

Sarah mumbled something around the thermometer. Given her mastery of pretty much every language on the planet, he figured that she probably meant for her words to be unintelligible.

“Hey, Walker, when I said five minutes, I didn’t actually mean twenty—oh, it’s awake.”

“Hey to you, too, Casey,” Chuck said, giving the NSA agent a look that was half-resignation and half-scowl. “It?”

Casey shrugged from the doorway. He was in off-duty clothes, just a polo shirt and jeans, but everything about him still smacked of G-man. “Not much good without the thing in your head, are you?”

Ellie glared. “John, that’s enough.”

“No, it’s okay, Ellie. Believe it or not, an insult is Casey-speak for ‘I was worried, but I’m glad you’re okay.’” Chuck rolled his eyes.

“If that helps you sleep at night, sure, you go right on believing that. Walker, c’mon, let’s go.”

Apologetic now, Sarah pulled the thermometer out as Casey left. “It’s his car,” she told Ellie more than Chuck. “He’s usually nicer.” 

Chuck coughed.

“Well, a _little_ nicer,” Sarah said, giving him a look. “He’s antsy about his car, so I’m going to give him a ride to go get it. And I’d better go before he decides to just hijack my car and drive it over to the cleaners without me. I’m glad you’re okay, Chuck.” She patted him on the knee, gave Ellie a final smile, and hurried away. Part of Chuck couldn’t help but think she was fleeing before Ellie could do anything else vaguely medical. Lousy patient indeed.

“He really was worried,” Chuck told Ellie.

“Uh-huh.”

“Deep down. Very, very deep down.”

“Okay, Chuck. I got it.” Ellie rolled her eyes and picked up the clipboard. “Moving on now. Is there anything else you remember?”

“Um, not much.” He sifted through the pieces of his memories from the night before, and frowned. “Just the robots attacking us until the earthquake started.”

“Chuck, there wasn’t any earthquake last night.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. I felt—”

“The effects of a drug that a tiny Russian robot pumped into you.” Ellie gave him a level stare. “It was all a hallucination, likely brought on by a combination of your panic and the drug.”

“Oh.” How could it not have been _real_ , though? Even if he could barely remember anything about it, Chuck could still taste the remnants of terror. The freaking walls had been shaking.

Ellie gave him a supportive smile. “We both know your instinctive reaction to earthquakes.”

“Ellie, that was _one_ time, like fifteen years ago—”

“Still.” One corner of Ellie’s mouth tilted upward. “Sarah told me what you did.”

That sort of statement, he had begun to learn, could mean bad things for him. He wouldn’t call Sarah and Ellie best buddies, not precisely, but their relationship had eased since Ellie had joined Prometheus. Even so, the two women had only one solid thing in common: him. Which could be daunting. As far as he knew, Ellie hadn’t actually gotten out the pictures of baby Chuck, but she’d already threatened it a least once.

Chuck felt an “uh-oh” was justified in this case.

“What did I do?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“You evidently are quite the master of the fireman’s carry. Sarah says you picked her up and got her to the doorway in what was apparently a ‘hailstorm’ of robot fire.” Ellie made air quotes with her fingers.

Had he really done that? Really? What the hell? That sounded more like some over-muscled action hero than him. “Are you sure? Man, if I really did do that to Sarah, she must have been…” He paused to think about it. “Pissed beyond all reckoning, honestly.”

“She’ll get over it. I thought it was sweet.” Ellie clapped him on the knee, just as Sarah had. “Go on, take a shower. It’ll help you cool down.”

“Okay.” He was a little unsteady as he rose, but he figured that would pass. Besides, he’d dealt with much worse when he hadn’t even been injured. At the doorway, he paused and turned. “Just out of curiosity, why aren’t you freaking out more? I mean, I was shot at by robots last night.”

“Trust me, given your penchant for getting into trouble, I’m amazed that that was all that happened.” Ellie mustered up a smile, but Chuck could see tension straining the edges. “I already had my freak-out. Your friend, Frank, is it? Frank already suffered for it, don’t worry.”

“Whoa. Devon taught you how to box?”

“Devon? No, Sarah.”

Just when he thought his partner’s relationship with his sister couldn’t get any scarier, they proved him wrong. Chuck gave Ellie a baffled look and decided the wisest course was just to leave that one alone. He headed for the showers.

**18 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: LOCKER ROOM**   
**18:49 PST**

Because the cool water sluicing over him felt nice after what seemed like years of being stuck in an overeager sauna, Chuck silenced the little voices that whispered and warned about water conservation, about what would happen if he used up all of the water, and there was nothing left, and it was too long until the next shipment arrived, and—

“Gorram it,” he muttered and stuck his head under the showerhead in defiance. “You’re in _Burbank_. Act like it.”

He took an extra fifteen minutes under the cool spray until the voices got too loud to ignore. It wasn’t precisely thumbing his nose at Siberia, but it was pretty damn close. That made him feel a bit more grounded as he stepped out of the shower and into a pair of jeans that were just now beginning to grow comfortable from wear. He’d avoid putting on a shirt until he absolutely had to, as he could feel the drug already beginning to work through his system and overheat everything.

A glance in the mirror made him frown. He crossed to his locker, felt around in the back, and pulled out a small black kit. Everything needed to be laid out with precision, which was much easier to do outside of the confines of his bunker. Just more _space_ everywhere. As much as he cursed it on a daily basis, he couldn’t help but be grateful for it now. He spread out a white gym towel on the bench and set out the tools he would need, lining up the edges perfectly. Only when he was satisfied did he nod to himself and get to work. 


	27. That Which My Heart Desires

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody can hurt me without my permission — _Mahatma Gandhi_

**18 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS**   
**19:41 PST**

Chuck felt much more normal, like a shroud had been lifted, when he emerged from the locker room. Definitely more like himself. So much so that he smiled when he saw Sarah sitting at the conference room table, one leg folded under the other. She played with the ends of her hair while she studied a file spread open before her.

He paused in the doorway, grateful he’d talked himself into pulling on a shirt. “Sorry I called you perky earlier.”

Mm. Don’t worry about it.” She glanced up to smile at him, and went still. “What did—”

“You like it?” Chuck ran a hand over the new buzz-cut. “It was getting too long again.”

“Oh.” Sarah stared at him for another second before her smile returned. It didn’t seem to be full force this time, and he could sense a hesitation behind it. Still, she crooked a finger at him. He tilted his head forward and obediently let her rub a hand over the crew cut. She laughed. “Next time at least give me some warning. I almost thought there was an intruder in Castle. Why didn’t you just get it trimmed?”

Chuck shrugged and lifted his head. “Less fuss this way. Hey, El.”

“Is that my little brother?” Ellie grinned from the infirmary doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. “No curls. Makes it hard to tell.”

“They’ll be back,” Chuck sighed. 

“You know, Chuck, sometimes the ladies do like curls on a man.” But Ellie smiled and held out a hand.

Chuck tilted his head forward again. “Is it lucky to rub my head?” he wondered. “Am I Buddha-Chuck?”

“It just feels good. Speaking of, you must be feeling better.” Ellie glanced between Sarah and Chuck. “Both of you.”

Though it was still a bit warm for his tastes in Castle, Chuck assured her that he was fine, and that he had nothing more strenuous planned than a video game marathon with Morgan, so he should probably just head out. He underestimated Ellie-the-overprotective-doctor, though. She accepted no resistance as she ushered both CIA agents back into the infirmary for one final check-up. “Devon called with the tox screens while you were in the shower,” she told Chuck as she fitted a blood pressure cuff around Sarah’s arm. “While there’s nothing in them that’s a danger to either of you, I don’t want any nasty surprises. So you’ll just have to deal with it.”

Chuck and Sarah rolled their eyes at each other. “I’d better at least get a lollipop out of this,” Chuck muttered.

“If you’re good,” Ellie said, activating the pressure in the cuff.

He’d heard that one before, which meant there was really only a fifty-fifty chance of getting said candy. Chuck sighed and leaned back against the wall in defeat. As Ellie turned away to grab something from the cabinet of medical horrors, he felt something land in his lap. He picked it up: a grape lollipop.

Sarah gave him the secret smile. He grinned back and stashed the contraband before Ellie could catch either of them grape-handed. When she turned with tongue depressors in hand, both Sarah and Chuck gave her innocent looks. She squinted, but apparently decided to let it go with a shrug.

“Okay, you two are fine,” she said after going through the motions. “But you’re both on notice. If you feel even the slightest bit wrong, you tell Devon or me right away, got it?”

Chuck swore to do so right away. Sarah’s promise was a little more reluctant.

A though occurred to him as they all rose to their feet. “Hey, El, you’ve got access to all of our medical files, don’t you?”

“Yes. Why? Are you worried about something?”

“Nope. But maybe you can settle a bet.” Chuck slanted a sideways look at Sarah; she returned it with suspicion added. “How many ribs _has_ Sarah Walker cracked?”

“Oh, God,” Sarah said. “Not this again.” When Ellie gave them puzzled looks, she sighed. “Bryce and Chuck had this bet going, back when Chuck was our tech support. About how many ribs I’ve cracked.”

“That’s…a strange bet.”

“It has something to do with, um, what was his name? Tolkien?”

Chuck nodded. Ellie blinked. “Tolkien,” she said. “What the…”

Sarah gave Chuck a final stink-eye. “Bryce and Chuck have been arguing about whether I’m more like Arwen—”

“Bryce.”

“Or Eowyn—”

“Me.”

“Since we all started working together. The only way to tell is by figuring out how hardcore I really am, apparently.” Sarah waved it off. “And the number of ribs I’ve fractured will apparently tell them that.”

“Well, I can’t tell you,” Ellie told Chuck. “Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“Not like it really matters,” Sarah added. “As, even if you’re right, Chuck, Bryce is never going to come back on the grid just to deliver a comic book.”

“This isn’t just any comic book. This is Miller’s ‘Dark Knight Returns,’ limited edition—signed.” Chuck glanced between the two women as he pulled his shoes on. “It’s something of a big deal. Besides, Sarah, you’ll find him, and I’d really like that comic book when that happens.”

“What makes you so sure you’re right?”

“Because you asked Ellie not to tell me. Clearly this is so I won’t become insufferable and gloat, and you two have a very obvious tell. I bet your blood type’s A positive.” When Ellie and Sarah exchanged yet another wary glance, Chuck smiled to himself. “See, that was a total guess. And you just proved me right. Thanks.”

“On that note,” Sarah said, “I’m going to head out before Chuck figures out my entire medical history. Will you both be okay getting home?”

Once they assured her they were fine, she bade them good-night and left. Chuck finished pulling on his shoes. “Guess we’re debriefing tomorrow,” he said as he and Ellie walked back to the locker room. He ran an absent hand over his buzzed head. It always took him a few hours to get used to feeling air on the back of his neck. He’d left the shaver on a different setting—slightly longer—as a concession, but now he felt normal once again.

Ellie frowned as Chuck opened his locker. “You have to work tomorrow?”

“Probably just the debriefing, and then I’ll get to play with the data we copped from Sergei Ezersky. Or at least I hope we copped it from Sergei. Seems unfair that we’d face down a tinker toy army of death and not get any data. And that’s even if they let me play with it. They still haven’t let me touch my old hard drive, the one with the Intersect virus on it.” The thought rankled somewhat. If Bryce had designed that virus, and Chuck fully believed he wouldn’t have outsourced that important of a job to anybody who might be bought, then Chuck would be one of the few people on the planet able to crack that virus. He frowned at the thought, ignoring Sarah’s “You’re trying to do too much warning” at the back of his mind, as he collected the wallet and keys from the top shelf of his locker. Something fluttered to the ground.

Ellie bent to grab it before he could. Still kneeling, she paused. “Chuck, what is this?”

He glanced down. “It’s nothing, just…” Ellie was holding the cracked, faded, and ancient picture of Jill he’d carried inside his parka for years. He hadn’t wanted to take his pictures with him into Sergei Ezersky’s estate in case something had gone wrong, but he hadn’t noticed the lack of either picture until now. Very gently, he reached down and pried the photograph from Ellie’s grip. “It’s…”

“You kept this with you, didn’t you? All this time? In Switzerland?”

Nice one, Bartowski. You’re having a decent time and you have to drag everything down, Casey’s voice scolded him. He picked up the second photo from the shelf and wordlessly showed it to his sister.

She let out a noise somewhere between a choked sob and a laugh, one hand flying up to cover her mouth. “I’d completely forgotten about this picture. In fact, I can’t believe you still have this. Wasn’t this your high school graduation?”

“Yes.”

“God, look at how young we are.”

Chuck smiled and handed her the picture. He shoved his hands roughly into his pockets. “It’s good to know some things don’t change.” Though they had. It was impossible not to go away for five years without everything on the planet changing. Morgan’s beard had been just a soul patch in that picture, and Ellie had still been gangly. Since she’d met Awesome and had started working out regularly, she’d lost some of the Bartowski gawkiness. Chuck couldn’t help but be jealous.

Now, her hand shifted so that it was cradling her face. A tear slipped down her cheek, but she knuckled it away and quickly glanced at him. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Chuck took the photo back and tucked it in next to its mate in his pocket. “It’s not like any of this is your fault.”

I know that. I just…I promised Sarah that I wouldn’t bawl all over you, so I won’t.” It seemed to take a Herculean effort, but Ellie fought back the tears and swallowed hard.

Chuck frowned. “ _Sarah_ made you promise that?” It seemed out of character.

“Breaking down in tears all over you all the time doesn’t help anything.” Ellie grabbed a clean towel from the rack to dry her eyes, shaking her head when Chuck frowned. “She put it nicer than that, I swear. But she had a point.”

“Weren’t you the one that taught me that we feel how we feel and there’s no changing that?”

Ellie smiled. “That may have been me, yes.”

By mutual and silent agreement, they started toward the exit, pausing every few feet so that Chuck could power things down and shut off lights. The government may not have seemed to care about pesky little things like power bills, but it felt irresponsible to leave everything running. Ellie was quiet as he went through the motions, shutting off monitors, killing the overhead lights and switching over the auxiliary power. She was perhaps too wrapped up in her own thoughts to intrude on his, so he didn’t mind. 

Would it ever not hurt where his sister was involved? He knew Ellie had a thousand questions: what had it been like? What had he been doing? What about the others that had been in seclusion in Switzerland with him, what were they like? What had he missed most? The doctor side of her had to have even more questions about the specifics of his agoraphobia, how he handled the bouts of it. Those were easy enough to answer: pretty damn specific down to open and new spaces, and he didn’t. Sarah just distracted him until he didn’t have to _think_ so much.

Another piece of his memory from the robo-rabbit nightmare filtered in. Not from inside the estate, he realized, but from just before, in the security console. When Sarah had climbed on top of him and everything had gone potentially X-rated. Was that all it had been? Just a way to distract him? Had she meant more by it? It had certainly _felt_ like more, the way the curvier planes of her body had fitted up against his, the way she’d seemed to hold his gaze with the intensity of hers. Like she’d been trying to say something to him.

But what?

“Do you still think about her?” Ellie’s quiet question startled him out of his reverie.

He almost asked, “Who, Sarah?” before he realized what a bad idea that would be. There was no reason, really, for him to be thinking about Sarah. They saw her day in and day out anyway. And given that she was a constant presence in their lives, it made no sense for Ellie to be referencing Sarah, which could only mean…

Jill.

“I…sometimes.” The second-to-last thing he wanted to confess to his sister was that he sometimes sat in his car for hours, just staring at a lit-up apartment window and wondering.

“Sometimes?” They headed up the stairs together, and Ellie frowned. “You carried her picture around with you for five years.”

“It’s complicated.” He didn’t want to lie to his sister, but they were rapidly nearing an area of thought he rarely allowed himself to approach, much less let other see. “It’s…I’ve gotten really good at not thinking about Jill Roberts over the years, okay?” It hurt too much.

“Chuck.” Ellie put a hand on his arm, turning him to face her. “What happened?”

He nearly started to say that he didn’t want to talk about it, but something stopped the words in his throat. They were Bartowskis. Ellie had always read through those weighty self-help manuals, the ones that might function better as doorstops, and she’d declared early on that Bartowskis clearly had soul. And repression was bad for the soul.

So he pushed through the Scooby Door and sighed. “She didn’t want me. She wrote me a letter saying that we were better apart, and that she couldn’t do the long distance thing anymore, not when she wasn’t sure she still loved me as much as I loved her. It wasn’t enough.” He sat down on the edge of his desk, ignoring the paperwork still covering the surface. “ _I_ wasn’t enough.”

“She wrote you a letter?” Ellie took up Sarah’s normal spot next to him on the desk. For a moment, she was silent, and then she made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. He glanced over at her in alarm, but she was already glaring at the opposite wall. “What a _bitch_!”

“Hey!” This wasn’t the way this was supposed to go.

“No, I mean it. That was cold and cruel and completely uncalled for.” Ellie’s glare took on the frightening sheen of a mother bear protecting her young. He’d always secretly feared that look, though he knew others should fear it more. “God, I just want to punch her for that!”

Bafflement rose. “I thought you always liked Jill.”

“I liked that she liked you, but now I just want to cut her. God!” Ellie pushed away from the desk and began to pace, short, choppy strides. The full Bartowski temper, on dangerously clear display. As he watched, simply determined to stay out of the line of fire, she whirled and faced him, her face flushed and her eyes practically glowing. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that she might not be enough for _you_ , Chuck?”

That was a fairly absurd thought. “You have to say that. You’re my sister.”

“I mean it. The woman dumped you with a Dear John letter while you were off serving your country, and you think you’re the unworthy one in this relationship?” Ellie went back to pacing. “I wish I’d known this years ago so that I could have kicked her ass when it was still relevant!”

Despite the whorls of ugly emotion that Jill’s name brought up, he laughed. It gave him the confidence to step into Ellie’s path and surprise her with a hug before she could attack him. “Easy, tiger,” he said, still laughing. “It was five years ago, so if there’s probably a time to get over it, it’s probably now, right?”

Ellie pulled away from him to glare. “But you’re _not_ over it.”

That particular arrow flew true. Chuck winced. “Well—”

“Why have you never seen what a bitch move this was? I know you feel like Jill was too good for you and you were lucky to have her, but I’ve never understood that. Ever. It’s not true. In fact, Chuck, it’s the exact opposite.”

Chuck moved back to the desk to buy himself a moment. Ellie’s passion had a way of catching up to people and delivering quite the sucker-punch. Not for the first time, he was grateful that she had very early on declared herself to be lawful good. With a woman like Ellie on their side, a group like Fulcrum wouldn’t just be hiding on the fringes of the government. No, by now they’d have taken over the country, with world domination well within their reach.

He forced a smile. Time to come clean, he thought. “It’s all been a bit of bad timing, sis. That’s the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“The letter arrived two days before they shipped me off to Switzerland.” It was getting easier, he noted with some distress, to keep up with the lies about Switzerland to his sister. “When I got there, it was just easier not to think about it. And trust me, I spent a lot of time not thinking about it.” 

Whole minutes that led into hours, eventually days, and finally by the time he arrived in Siberia, weeks and month at a time could pass where the name Jill Roberts wouldn’t cross his mind. And then he would be involved in the intricate or the mundane, and there she would appear like some ghost or ghoul or fragment, back to haunt him so that the cycle could start anew. He moved a shoulder. “I guess it’s safe to say that I’m not over her, so you’re right.”

“Well, start thinking about her.”

Chuck avoided the urge to clean out his ear, just in case. “Say what?”

“You need to get _over_ this bitch and move on with your life.” Ellie rolled her eyes, but when she grabbed Chuck’s arms above the elbows, her expression was sincere. “Chuck, the thing I want most for you is to see you happy again.”

He doubted he deserved happiness like the kind Ellie wanted for him. He was just too broken. “It’s going to be awhile. If ever, sis.”

“I know that, but I think you’ll be happier if you deal with this Jill thing.” Ellie let go of his arms so that she could once again perch on the edge of the desk next to him. “Letting it fester like this…it can’t be good for you, Chuck.”

“What would you recommend I do?”

“Start dating other people?” Ellie asked, a touch of hope in her voice.

“Oh, yeah, that would work. Say, hello there, woman that would date me against all odds and in spite of myself. Which appetizer would you like to split, the crab dip or the crab-stuffed mushrooms, but hey, excuse me for a minute while I go change into yet another shirt because I’ve already sweated through this one.” Chuck slumped forward and scowled. “Not really an option, El.”

I know.”

“Even if a woman _were_ interested. And trust me, none would be.”

Ellie cuffed him lightly upside the head. “I don’t know about that.”

“See, again, you have to say that because you’re my sister.”

He almost missed the uncertain look Ellie flicked at the door. His eyebrows scrunched together.

“Okay,” she said before he could ask, “maybe no dating other people yet. But maybe try something else? Do you still have the letter?”

Chuck shook his head. “I burned it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, when I got to S—Switzerland.”

Ellie sighed. “I have my old ‘Jagged Little Pill’ CD.”

“Don’t think Alanis is going to help me either.”

“You never know. She was pretty therapeutic for me after I broke up with Doug.”

“Oh, geez,” Chuck groaned. “I remember that. You played that album for three weeks on end. All the freaking time. I thought you were going to waste away and we’d have to blast ‘All I Really Want’ at your funeral, and holy crap, the fact that I even remember that song title tells me you did play that album too much.”

And if he heard any song from it at all, especially the ironically un-ironic _Ironic_ , he would probably hunt down Ellie’s ex just to kick his ass for the fun of it.

“It was a rough break-up.” Ellie sighed and waved a hand, dismissing what was undeniably a dark chapter of their lives. She looked as if she were contemplating swallowing bitter medicine as she turned to look at him. “You need to find closure. The only way you’re going to be able to do that is if you confront Jill about it.”

“Five years later?” Chuck hunched his shoulders. “Doesn’t that come across as a little…pathetic?”

“No.”

“Really? Most people would be over their ex-girlfriend by now, don’t you think?”

“Chuck…” Ellie trailed off with a laugh that almost reached actual humor. “What on earth has misguided you so badly that you believe you’ll ever be cursed with normality? C’mon. You took apart our toaster before your seventh birthday.”

“I wanted to see how it worked. We didn’t have Google back then.”

“Trust me, I know. Google would have really helped when I had to actually fix the stupid thing for you before Dad got home and saw.”

“But you did it so well,” Chuck said. “The toast didn’t even burn on the one side after you fixed it.”

“That’s not the point. The point is, you were special even before the government sent you to seclusion and before your best friend dropped this thing in your brain.” Ellie knocked once on his forehead. “So there are always going to be extenuating circumstances. We all have our crosses to bear, so to speak, and I think your life will be a lot easier for you without the one named Jill. So go talk to her, get to the bottom of what happened five years ago, get your closure, and move on.”

Chuck went silent for a moment. Closure. Talking to Jill. Actually going up to her, face to face, and wondering aloud what had happened five years ago, why she had suddenly seemed to fall out of love with him. He’d thought they’d been okay, they’d been happy, which was why he had put off proposing.

It was possible, he had discovered five years before, to be very, very wrong about things. In a way that could _hurt_.

Beside him, Ellie sighed. “Look, if it’s really bad, you could always write her a letter.”

“You think?”

“She wrote _you_ a letter and seemed to get her closure. Why shouldn’t you be allowed the same courtesy?”

“I guess.” He didn’t see how writing a letter was going to help him much. It was just putting words on paper and voicing emotions he wasn’t sure he could or did feel. In the end, it was easier just to sit and watch a window and not think about anything at all. 

But it didn’t make things _better_. He hated to compare himself to a toaster, but if Ellie could clean up his technological messes as a kid, maybe she could help him now. So he shrugged. “I’ll think about it.”

“You do that. And you know, I’m here if you need to talk, or Devon is. Or even Sarah, you know. She wants to help.”

“That’s why the two of you have been all Wonder Twins lately?”

Ellie laughed. “Wonder Twins? Wasn’t one of them male?”

“Yeah. I’ll leave it to you to figure out who is who.”

“Oh, thanks ever so. But you know me. When I bought my car, I spent three weeks doing nothing but searching through the Kelley Blue Book before I could even decide what type of car I might want to buy, let alone make and model.”

He hadn’t known that. It had happened in that horrible five year gap while he’d been in the bunker. But he gave her a smile that pretended he had known that.

“So when I had a lot of questions about this Prometheus situation, Sarah’s been on hand to answer everything.” Ellie shoulder-bumped him. “Actually, she’s pretty fun, once you get past the super-secret agent façade.”

Chuck felt the weight of the grape lollipop in his pocket. He smiled. “Mm-hmm. It’s a little scary fast how she can bring up ‘façades,’ though.” He used his fingers to make air-quotes. “She went from zero to airhead in a blink once. I swear, I was talking to Sarah and then I was talking to Sarah’s valley girl twin.”

“Oh yeah?” Ellie laughed and pushed herself off of the desk, evidently deciding that the conversation was drawing to a close. He followed. “That must have been a sight to behold.”

“I think Jill was a little scared, yeah.”

Ellie startled him by grabbing his arm. “Wait, Sarah’s met Jill?”

“We ran into each other at the Stanford game.” And that had just been the epitome of awkward, awkwardness that even now made him push his shoulders back. “Sarah went all valley girl right before we ran into her. I think I was more startled by that than by seeing Jill again.”

“I bet.” Ellie bit her lip, always a sign that she wanted to say something else, but she seemed to let the subject drop as they finally hit the parking lot to leave. “Take your time with the Jill situation, Chuck. I may want to push her off of a building, but this is about how _you_ feel, not me. There’s no magic fix here.”

Chuck bobbed his chin forward a little. “We feel what we feel and there’s no changing that,” he said sagely.

“You mock, but it’s true.” Ellie still elbowed him for taking such a droll stance on the advice she’d been giving him for years. “Promise me you’ll at least think about what I said tonight.”

“Trust me, I always think about your advice.” Chuck twirled his keys around his fingertip as he walked her to her car. “You going to be okay getting home?”

“I should be asking _you_ that. I’m not the one that got pumped full of scary Russian goo last night.”

“I’m fine, I swear. Just grateful that I’m not mysteriously covered in green scales or something weirder. Though I wouldn’t mind mutant powers showing up.”

“I’m sure.” Ellie stood up on her tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t forget—dinner’s at six on Thursday, and let John know he’s invited, too, if he doesn’t already have plans with his own family.”

Chuck, halfway to his car a couple of spots over, stopped. The concept of Casey having a family, of there potentially being more Caseys running around, terrorizing the world, just seemed completely foreign. Like drinking milk without Oreos, or playing Master Chief without having Cortana’s voice nagging at him.

Truly bizarre.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sure. I’ll ask him.”

“Good. Bye!” With a final wave, Ellie climbed into her car and took off. Chuck idled in his own car, just turning Ellie’s words over in his mind, and trying his hardest not to think about everything that he could remember about the estate. The few flashes he did were honestly pretty terrifying, so maybe it was better that he couldn’t recall.

He should go, he thought as Ellie’s car pulled out of the driveway. He had a standing Sunday night date with Morgan to play video games and veg out with grape soda and other unhealthy alternatives. He could go over, get lost in either the new or the nostalgic, just hang out with a best friend that had no expectations of him whatsoever, which was an absolute comfort.

Instead, he reached for his cell and dialed Morgan’s number. “Hey, buddy,” he said when Morgan answered. “I think I’m gonna need a rain check. Is that okay? Yeah, well, something came up, a coding problem that took awhile to fix, and I’m tired and…”

He trailed off, listening to Morgan’s comfortable cadence. Even if Morgan was disappointed, he was still happy to even hear from his best friend, and always happy just to chat for a couple of minutes.

“Yeah, I’ve got something I need to do tonight,” he said when Morgan finally let him talk again. “But is Tuesday good for you?”

He’d need the pick-me-up after his third session with Dr. Anton. He was almost sure he was going to talk this time. His last therapy session had been spent playing Tetris on his phone. So he smiled when Morgan instantly agreed to move his late-night shift at the Buy More to accommodate an all-nighter of Mario Brothers worship.

Chuck was smiling as he hung up.

When he glanced over at the binoculars sitting on his front seat, though, the smile faded completely. He put the car into drive. One more night, he promised himself, one more night to just sit and be himself and watch, and then he would write that letter and try to get better.

He doubted it would work. 


	28. Pick a Little, Talk a Little

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not — _Friedrich Nietzsche_

**21 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: UPSTAIRS**   
**13:37 PST**

“Any luck?” 

Chuck didn’t look up from the computer monitors in front of him, though his shoulders tensed a bit. “I’m sorry,” he said, crankiness flavoring every syllable, “did you happen to hear me shout ‘Eureka’ or something? Because I must have missed it myself.”

Casey’s smirk grew so pronounced that Chuck didn’t have to look up to see it. “So…no, then?” Casey asked.

Chuck scowled at the monitor. “Yes, no. Don’t you have guns to clean?”

“Always. This is more fun.” Casey crossed his arms over his chest, his smile broadening. He wore a G-man suit, but as Chuck hadn’t flashed on any immediate threats in the LA area, he’d been stuck in the office all day. Which made it only too understandable that he would be haunting Chuck’s office. Outside of stakeouts, Casey didn’t handle boredom well. And he’d apparently learned early on that a frustrated Chuck was a source of hours of entertainment. “Maybe we should give the drive to the boys at the DNI. Seems you’re not nerd enough for the situation, Bartowski.”

“I’ll have you know, I worked three years in a row on the winning solar car that my fraternity brothers and I built,” Chuck said before he realized that he was essentially walking into a trap.

Indeed, Casey’s smirk broadened. “Nerd,” he snorted, and walked away whistling, mission accomplished.

Chuck had to respect a man who could stick to his principles. Too bad said principles involved annoying Chuck on every possible occasion. And Chuck was stressed enough without impatient NSA agents breathing down his neck. He’d been glued to the computer screen for three days, morning to night, coding and trying to circumvent Sergei Ezersky’s awe-inspiring security. Sure, the man designed nightmarish robots that inspired phrases like “Aww” and “Oh, God, kill it with fire,” but, damn. Security shouldn’t be this hard to crack, not when it was Chuck Bartowski trying to crack it.

He’d already shoved up his sleeves to his elbows. If he hadn’t shaved most of it off, his hair would be a rumpled mess from the number of times he’d run his hands through it. Three empty Red Bull cans lined the desk next to his right hand, intermingling with four water bottles Sarah had sneaked into the lineup. The trash can beside his desk stood as a graveyard to a fast food diet that made his doctors wince.

But it wasn’t like he could drag himself away. The security on Sergei Ezersky’s cloned computer drive was just too…much. Even as he repeatedly smashed into one brick wall after the next, he couldn’t help but be impressed. Frustrated as hell, but admiring at the same time.

He checked his check-list of things he still needed to try, and moved onto the next option.

Twenty minutes later, he let out another curse and moved to the next.

This man had better security on his computer than he did on his house, Chuck was certain. He’d been able to break _that_ given some preparation and thirty minutes of work on-site. But the computer drive was a whole new ball-game, where every single member of the other team was the insane lovechild of Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez and Chuck had a batting average below the Mendoza line. He had less of a chance of winning than the Washington Generals.

That attempt proved a little more viable. Grumbling under his breath about crazy Russians and their robo-rabbits and their security systems that made a level of _Halo 3_ look like _Pong_ , he hunkered down.

He jerked back something touched his wrist.

“Wh-what?” He blinked away a computer screen-induced haze and looked over. Sarah was not only leaning beside him, she was actually sitting on his desk. She was holding his hand and playing with his watch. “What are you doing? Why are you doing that? Hey, stop.” He slapped at her hands. He needed that hand to code.

She slapped back at him. “I’m setting your watch.”

“What? Why?”

“Because.” Sarah set his hand back on the desk. “There. Now you can get back to work.” She patted him once on the cheek, jumped to her feet, and sauntered off toward her office.

Such was the draw of the code that he didn’t watch her go. He just hunched forward and got ready to follow the white robo-rabbit down the rabbit hole of computer code and DOS overrides.

Time passed. He couldn’t have said how much, just that he grew more and more absorbed with trying to out-code one Sergei Ezersky. When his watch beeped, he shot straight up.

Sarah was waiting for him on the other side of his desk, holding his jacket and looking at her watch. “Works every time,” she said, smiling as he blinked muzzily at her. “C’mon, time to go.”

“What? Go where?” Obediently, he rose to his feet.

“I’m driving you over to your therapy appointment.” Sarah helped him into his jacket. “You can work on that code when you get back.”

Chuck frowned and gave the screen a second look. Sarah wasn’t having any of that, though. She hauled on his arm, pulling him away from the computer screen and keeping his arm trapped between hers all the way out to the parking lot in case he decided to try and make a break for it. “C’mon, you just have to get it over with,” she told him as they climbed into her Jeep. “And Dr. Anton’s a nice guy, right?”

“He is,” Chuck said grudgingly, reaching forward to play with the radio.

Sarah slapped his hand away. “I want to listen to NPR.”

“Why? It’s so boring. Here.” Chuck put on the Lithium station, dodging another slap, and leaned back in his seat to watch the L.A. traffic go by. He’d come a long way in just a month. Maybe it was just having Sarah there, but he didn’t start sweating at the mere idea of venturing into L.A. No, it took ten or more minutes for it to start getting to him. He nodded at the radio. “See? Doesn’t it take you back to high school?”

“God, I hope not.”

“Not a good time?”

“Not exactly,” Sarah said, wrenching the Jeep into a left turn that practically put it up on two wheels.

More than accustomed to her, Chuck didn’t even bother to grab the door. “Huh,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “That surprises me. Seems you’d be, like, the softball star or something.”

“Late bloomer.” Sarah cut off a VW Bug. “Extremely late.”

“What? No. Get out.” Chuck stared at her, trying to imagine it. When that proved impossible, he just shook his head and watched the scenery fly by. “Not president of the Knives Club, then?”

“Ha, no.”

“Secretary of the Sharpshooters?”

Sarah slanted him a sideways grin. “I thought I was an office manager?”

“Touché,” Chuck said. “Treasurer of the Tae Kwon Do Society?”

“My high school experience wasn’t normal.”

“That’s okay. Neither were any of my suggestions.” Chuck shrugged and pulled out his phone, tapping on the screen a few times. “Last time I played Tetris the whole time, but I think with this session I’ll go with Ninja Ropes.” He set the game up to load on his phone.

“Or you could just talk to the psychiatrist.” Sarah sped up to get onto the freeway.

Chuck wisely waited until she’d cut across traffic to get into the carpool lane. “That’s far too conventional. I’d rather walk on the wild side and mock the face of conventionality.”

“Oh, is that what they’re calling it?” Sarah’s fingers tapped on the steering wheel, but not in time to the music. An outward sign of agitation, Chuck deduced, watching out of the corner of his eye. He waited for the dam to break and for her to say something, but she kept silent.

He broke first. “What’s on your mind?” he asked, stealing an oft-used line from her.

She didn’t look over, which was probably a good thing. She was a crazy enough driver with her attention focused on the road. “Nothing.”

“Yeah? Then why are you tapping?”

Now she did look over, just to squint at him. “How do you pick up on that and not—hm, never mind. Just, I think you should talk to him. To Dr. Anton.”

Casey had said the same thing—maybe not outright, but close enough. Chuck leaned back, half against the seat and half against the door, a frown pulling at his mouth.

“I mean, if you don’t want to, that’s up to you and I understand, but…” The fingers started tapping again. “You’ve been sitting in a car staring up at an apartment for the past three nights, and I’m a little worried.”

Chuck’s frown deepened. “You’ve been watching me?”

“I check the GPS at ten, before I go to bed. Just to make sure.” Two more taps of the thumb. “And your location’s been outside of Jill’s apartment for the past three nights. I didn’t want to say anything about it, but…”

“Talk about not normal,” Chuck said. He shifted so that he was facing forward again, the better to watch Sarah flirt with two hundred or so car accidents between Dr. Anton’s office and Castle. “Ellie wants me to write her a letter.”

“Who?”

“You know. Jill.”

Sarah was quiet for a minute, mostly because she was busy gunning the engine to get around a minivan. “Do you think that will help?”

“I don’t know.” Chuck moved a shoulder.

Sarah swerved back into the carpool lane. She winced, maybe at the fact that she almost clipped the minivan’s front fender. “You could try actually talking to her.”

“I don’t know,” Chuck said again.

“Talk to Dr. Anton, then.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s what he’s there for.” Sarah mimicked his shoulder move. “If you’re not going to talk to Ellie or me about it, talk to him. He won’t judge.”

Chuck tipped down his sunglasses to look over at her. “And you will?”

She smiled. “We all just want to help you out, Chuck. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“And sitting out in front of her apartment like that…it’s not healthy.” Sarah, seeing their exit up ahead, methodically began to cut across the lanes of traffic. She glanced over at him, and he wished she wouldn’t because it meant that she looked away from the freeway of death she’d created with her driving. “I think you know that, too.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He hunched his shoulders and scowled. “I know it.”

“So. Simple solution: talk to Dr. Anton.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chuck said again, sinking back into his seat. Sarah just smiled, patted his knee, and focused on not killing them on the way to therapy.

**21 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**DR. ANTON’S OFFICE**   
**14:54 PST**

Sarah’s suggestion had made it seem so simple: talk to Dr. Anton. Tell him how you feel.

But now that he was sitting on the couch, knees together, his hands atop them, sweating despite the easygoing, bland office atmosphere around him, Chuck felt his throat clam up. Dr. Anton sat across from him, a simple, innocuous notepad on his knee. He didn’t make any of nervous motions. He didn’t jiggle a leg, or tap the pen, or even chew on a pen cap. 

Where was the energy _going_ , Chuck wondered. Why didn’t he need an outlet? His first therapist, Scott, had always been content to shoot the breeze and talk about the A’s until Chuck had been comfortable enough to talk. Dr. Anton merely sat across from him, a pleasant look on his face. “Pleasant” seemed to describe him well, though “unassuming” might work, too. He was somewhere in his mid-forties and comfortable with it, balding on top and sagging in the middle. Chuck was almost disappointed that he wasn’t wearing a sweater vest.

Abruptly, Chuck leaned forward. Dr. Anton’s lack of motion made him want to compensate. “Everybody wants me to talk to you,” he said, breaking the silence that had dragged on for ages.

“Do they?” Dr. Anton asked, pulling his foot up onto the opposite knee. “And what is it you want, Charles?”

“Chuck,” Chuck corrected him. “And what I want is to stop being a drag on everybody around me. Wow, that came out depressing.” He blinked. “I guess what I want is to get better.”

“Better?”

“You know. Be able to step outside without having to psych myself up for thirty minutes, have normal conversations where I don’t second-guess everything. That sort of thing.” Chuck took a deep breath. “My sister thinks I need to talk to you about…about Jill. Sarah thinks so, too.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I don’t know.” Chuck picked his hands up and put them back on his knees, just a small movement. It seemed to make him feel better, so he did it again. “It’s a little personal?” 

“I don’t want to force you into something you’re not comfortable with, Chuck.” Dr. Anton gave him a kindly smile. “Why don’t you tell me about your sister? Or Sarah? They sound important to you.”

“Ellie and Sarah? Sure, they’re important.” Chuck played with his thumb, tugging on it with his other hand. He yanked once, hard enough to pull it clean off, but it remained as firmly attached to his hand as ever. “Our parents weren’t around, so Ellie raised me. I always respect her opinion, and Sarah’s, well, Sarah.”

“Yes? What does that mean?”

It took him a moment to remember the cover details. He should have reviewed the packet like he always did right before he came and spent an hour playing on his phone on Dr. Anton’s couch, but he’d been so wrapped up in breaking Ezersky’s security that he hadn’t had the chance. It just figured, the one time he would use the freaking information…

“Sarah was one of the agents on the team that retrieved me,” he said, finally remembering. “And Agent Case was on the team, too. So I’m probably most comfortable around them.”

“You call her Sarah,” Dr. Anton said, consulting his notes, “this Agent Waters?”

“Yes. Case prefers to go by his last name, though.” Chuck twisted his thumb around. “He’s another one that thinks I should talk to you. He hasn’t outright said it, but he kind of hinted—or grunted—at it, which is Case-speak for, ‘Do it already.’ He kind of has his own language.”

Just like Sarah had her own language of smiles and gestures.

“What they think means a lot to you,” Dr. Anton observed, writing something down in his pad. “Their opinions matter?”

“Yes. Sarah’s more than Cas—Case’s, probably. They’ve been there from the beginning, and they haven’t left or snapped or anything. Well, Case has, but again, that’s just him. He’s not the most patient of men.”

And this is something you worry about?”

“Case being patient? Not really. It’s just part of him.” Chuck caught the raised eyebrow and jolted. “Oh! You mean them snapping or leaving? Well, yeah, I kind of worry about it sometimes. Like, sometimes I look at them and wonder, ‘Why aren’t you sick of me yet? Why haven’t you left and gone on to a better job where you’re not babysitting some loser that the bad guys didn’t even care enough about to torture?’”

His cover, after all, was a guy stuck in a Russian prison for five years, abandoned by his government and his captors, practically.

What a sucky cover.

“Have you talked to either of your partners about this?” Dr. Anton asked, his voice soothing.

Chuck shook his head.

“Why not? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

“I dunno. I guess, fear that maybe if I don’t say it, they won’t have thought about it, and they won’t wake up to the fact that the possibility exists?” Chuck leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his hands pressed palm-to-palm in front of him. “It’s idiotic, I know. The possibility does exist.” Although it wasn’t likely. What had been the word Sarah had used, that night on the beach when he’d almost taken her head off over the Ellie situation?

Frozen.

Stuck.

Sarah and Casey weren’t going anywhere. And that was his fault, too.

“You should see Sarah, Doc,” he said, staring down at his hands before he glanced up at Dr. Anton. “She’s…she’s almost not real, you know? She kicks so much ass, but she’s really nice, and she never seems to run out of patience unless we’re on a mission together and even then, it’s not really me she gets antsy at. Hell, I’m positive that something on our last mission scared the crap out of her, but she just kept going. She’s like a freaking Energizer Bunny. And I look at her, and at Agent Case, and I think, ‘Oh, my God, you’re stuck in Burbank, and it’s my fault.’”

“Is it your fault?”

“What?”

Dr. Anton shrugged. The move didn’t fit, somehow. It seemed too kinetic. “Is it your fault that your partners are, as you say, stuck in Burbank?”

“Well…” That made Chuck frown a little. True, it hadn’t been his choice to get the Intersect, and with Gwen’s backup, he could have put the base of operations anywhere despite the fact that the higher-ups had hinted strongly that the base remain in DC, where he could be protected by quite a few more men and women. But he had wanted to see Ellie again, and to be able to see her on a regular basis. And technically, he hadn’t known Sarah would be suffering in Burbank right alongside him. She’d told him she had new orders.

Casey, that was a given. For the two weeks he’d been in DC, the man had been like a living, breathing, grunting shadow.

“Partially,” Chuck said at length. “I mean, I chose to come to Burbank. But I didn’t choose them, specifically.”

“So, that was just the bad luck? That it was them, these people you would care about, that would get stuck in Burbank?”

Just a couple more people screwed over by the government’s illogical choices?

Chuck shook his head and finally met Dr. Anton’s eyes. “I guess you could say it was.”

“And these partners…Sarah and Agent Case. Do they care for you?”

“What?”

“You’ve made your feelings about them clearly known. You respect their opinions, and they matter to you.” Dr. Anton scribbled something on his notepad as he spoke, his voice never varying from a relaxed, gentle tone. “How do you think you stand with them?”

“They’re not exactly alike.”

“Start with Agent Case, then. How do you think Agent Case feels about you?”

That one made Chuck frown a little. “He’s…gruff with me,” he said at length, “but that’s just his usual setting. We didn’t get off to a good start.”

_Those were warning shots! Next one goes in your skull, Bartowski!_

“But you know, I think I’ve grown on him a little. He made me a sandwich once.” Chuck didn’t mention the therapy talk they’d had in the car. It felt like he was infringing on Casey’s privacy if he went into more detail. “And he’s a surprisingly good teacher when he wants to be. I’ve learned a lot from him.”

“Hm. And your other partner? Sarah?”

That was a harder one to quantify. It felt unfair to try and fit a woman who encompassed so much in his life into just a few details. “I know she doesn’t hate me,” Chuck said, as that was really the only thing he felt certain about from day to day. He knew he frustrated her, he knew she’d gone to the wall for him against Graham and Beckman and probably wouldn’t mind doing so again. “She’s so incredibly patient. I don’t understand it, how patient she can be. I…have a hard time with some things. It takes me a long time to go to outside, and I can’t handle crowds very well, and she’s never made fun of me, or belittled me. It’s like she’s not even judging me. She just says, ‘We’ll deal with it,’ and when she says that, you almost have to believe her. And she should be complaining because all she does is glorified babysitting, but it’s like she doesn’t mind.” 

He shrugged helplessly and scratched the back of his head, leaving his hand resting on the back of his neck. “She’s got this sense of humor about everything, too, which is great. I never know when I’m going to look up and she’ll be laughing about something, or just waiting to share a joke, and it’s cool because most of the world thinks she’s so reserved. And she’s so kick-ass. Like, I saw her fight off four guys at once and drop them all without even really breaking a sweat.”

“She sounds like quite the woman,” Dr. Anton said after a long pause. He scribbled something on the notepad.

It was all Chuck could do not to crane his neck and try to see.

Later, after the timer in the corner had gone off, declaring the session over, Chuck headed out to the parking lot. That same “quite the woman” was waiting for him. Casey always waited in the car, sitting behind the wheel and glowering, but Sarah sat on the hood of the car, a bag of gummy bears on her lap. As Chuck approached, she tossed one in the air and caught it in her mouth. He grinned.

“Sorry,” she said, throwing him a gummy bear as he neared. “I got bored, so I sneaked in and found the vending machine.”

“You found gummy bears in a vending machine?”

“I know, crazy, right?” Sarah tossed one and caught it in the same hand as she studied him. “You look…wrecked. Hard game of Ninja Ropes?”

“No.” Chuck hoisted himself onto the hood and helped himself to a few gummy bears. He tossed one, missed it completely, and decided to eat the rest straight. Chewing gave him a momentary distraction. “I talked to him.”

“What about? Jill?”

“No.” Chuck shrugged.

Sarah glanced sideways at him, but didn’t press the subject. “Feel better?”

He felt vaguely like a wrung-out sponge. “Eh.”

“Want to play hooky and go see a movie or something?”

“No, I really should get back and work on that code.” Chuck gave her a regretful smile as he filched a couple of gummy bears. “And then I think it’s high time I sat down and wrote a letter, don’t you?”

“Only if you want to, Chuck.” Sarah rubbed a hand down his arm, and it felt nice. He smiled again as she tipped back to catch another gummy bear in her mouth.

“I want to. You’re right. Ellie’s right. Hell, even Casey’s right. Getting better is about me, and I think writing that letter’s going to help.” Chuck jumped off of the hood and turned to give her a hand down. Though she could have flipped off of the hood fourteen different ways, no doubt, she grinned as she gripped his fingers and hopped down. “It can be something I can be thankful for tomorrow, right?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Thanksgiving?”

“Oh. Right. I forgot.” 

“Trust me, after you see what Ellie goes through tomorrow, you’ll never forget this holiday again.” Chuck gave a happy groan at the thought as he climbed into the passenger seat so that Sarah could defy death a few dozen times on the drive back to Castle. “So much food. You’re going to love it, I promise.”

“Okay, then.” Sarah shot him a last grin and whipped the car out into traffic. When he moved to adjust the radio, she didn’t slap his hand away.

**21 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**21:49 PST**

Casey pulled up short at the sight of Chuck sitting on the Bachelor Pad’s sofa. His keys still dangled from a finger. “How come you’re not glued to your monitor?”

“Sarah locked me out of the computer.”

“Walker did? Heh.” Casey shut the door behind him.

“I could probably get around it in under five minutes.” Chuck tilted his hands and the controller, unconsciously squinting every time he fired of a cluster of shots onscreen. “But maybe she has a point. I need to take a step back from the coding, clear my head. Whatever. How was the NRA chapter meeting?”

“Bunch of actor wimps looking to get a badass reputation through handguns. Probably shoot their own dicks off, do the world a favor. Though I did get to talk to an old jarhead out of the First about the new M-one-thirty-four that we just got installed in Castle. She’s a beaut. May be Army crap, but she’s still pretty.” Case drew a cigar from his pocket, stuck it between his teeth, and took his time lighting it. He puffed in a drag and let the smoke rings fly as he sat down on the couch by Chuck. “Ooh-rah.”

“Hooah,” Chuck said automatically. On screen, he tossed in a grenade for good measure and ran onto the next point. Fallaise Gap wasn’t going to save itself.

Casey glanced over in surprise to hear the Army grunt from him. After a second, he shook his head, possibly reminding himself that Chuck had indeed gone through Basic. Chuck didn’t blame him. He sometimes forgot it himself, which was kind of a marvel. Those nine weeks had been hell.

“What’s this?” Still puffing on the cigar, Casey leaned forward and plucked up the folded white sheets of paper on the coffee table. Something clattered to the floor. He bent and picked it up.

Chuck was probably a little more vicious than he needed to be as he sneaked up behind three Nazis, switched to his Walther P-Thirty-Eight, and took all three down with head-shots. 

“Hell, Bartowski,” Casey said, apparently content to be ignored. “You proposing to somebody?” Casey held up the ring that Chuck had retrieved from his dumpsite at Stanford. His thick thumb and forefinger absolutely dwarfed the tiny twist of metal. Chuck watched him out of the corner of his eye, and didn’t miss the way Casey almost dropped the ring when a thought hit home. “You’re not—it’s not _Walker_ , is it?”

“Sarah? No.” Chuck glanced away from the game to give Casey a “what the hell?” look.

“Probably a good thing. Looks cheap.”

“Excuse me, I made that.”

Casey grunted.

“It was a promise ring. For my ex-girlfriend.” Chuck tossed yet another grenade—he’d have to stock up soon—and hustled out. “The same ex-girlfriend that dumped me via letter while I was at OCS. And that paper you’re grubbying up is my reply.”

“A Dear…Jane letter?” 

“Mostly. It has elements of ‘screw you, Jane,’ in the middle. Turns out, writing can be very cathartic.” So could taking out an entire platoon of Nazis on _Call of Duty 3_ , but that went without saying, Chuck had always felt. “It was Ellie’s suggestion. I’m going to deliver the letter tomorrow.”

“On Thanksgiving?”

“Yeah. She’ll be visiting her parents up by Sacramento, so I won’t run into her.”

“Could just mail it.”

Chuck shifted a shoulder. “Feels wrong.”

“Okay.” Casey turned his attention to the game. “What’s going on here?”

“Classic shoot ‘em up game. You’re an American soldier in St-Lo, you’ve got your choice of weapons.” Chuck flicked the controller to cycle through his arsenal, watching the way Casey’s eyebrows rose in approval. He showed off what the rest of the buttons did, and handed the controller over to Casey.

“What?” Casey looked down at the game controller in his hands as if he were holding some sort of alien object.

“You like shooting things, so shoot things.”

It took Casey a few false starts, and some assists from Chuck, but before long, he was racing across the terrain as Private Nichols, shooting Nazis and laughing throatily each time one of them took a head shot. He probably would have had an easier time if he’d stuck with the Browning. Hindsight made Chuck wince a little. Maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned that he preferred the MP-Forty over the Browning because he was such a good shot in the game since it only made Casey determined to be just as good as Chuck.

He was also vaguely aware that he may have created a monster. Sitting on the couch, watching his coworker obliterate Nazis while Chuck himself held onto a letter he’d written in fits of anger, bitterness, bafflement, and regret, he didn’t mind so much.

He dreaded the next day, when he would have to deliver the letter.

But he kind of looked forward to it, too. 

**22 NOVEMBER 2007**  
 _ **CHEZ**_ **BARTOWSKI/WALKER**  
 **11:17 PST**

“Um, wow. I didn’t realize how much Ellie gets into Thanksgiving dinner.”

Chuck joined Sarah at the trash can and peered inside. “What? Just because you saw her trash an entire turkey? That’s nothing.”

“Apparently not.” Sarah rested a hand on her hip. “It’s such a waste, though.”

“Sounds like someone’s lamenting the demise of the turkey. It’s probably happy that we’re not eating it, you know. Or getting stuffing shoved up its butt. I hear it’s a very unpleasant experience.”

Sarah’s face crinkled in disgust. “Just the kind of image I need right before lunch. Thanks.”

“Chuck Bartowski, mental image extraordinaire,” he said with a dramatic bow. He barely caught the sponge Sarah threw at his face. “Hey! That’s dirty!”

“Not yet it isn’t. Toss it back, I need to get started.”

“Aye-aye, boss.” Chuck sidled up next to her and turned on the faucet. “It’s a shame Morgan isn’t here yet, actually. Knowing him, he’d probably take that entire turkey home and have it for dinner for the next week and a half.”

“Before or after it went into the trash?”

“Doesn’t matter, really. It’s Ellie’s special Thanksgiving turkey. Awesome and his frat brothers could use it as a football during one of their Rose Bowl pre-gamers and Morgan would still try to salvage enough for turkey sandwiches.”

Sarah’s scrubbing slowed. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“It’s _that_ good, Sarah. Frat-boy sweat and all.”

“Ew.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “Disgusting.”

For some reason, a memory chose that exact moment to sucker punch him in the face. Suddenly, all Chuck could see were intense blue eyes reflecting the dim glow of a laptop, the feeling of limb against limb; so little space, and there was heat, lots of it, _everywhere_ —

“Chuck?”

He blinked and shook the image away. The soapy cup clenched in his hand was about a foot away from the running water. Meanwhile, Sarah was looking at him like he’d accidentally shot himself with a tranq dart. 

“Are you okay?” Her eyes were narrowed in concern, the beginnings of a frown etched in her face. “You spaced out for a minute.”

Chuck shoved a cup under the water. “Ah, yeah, sorry. I see what you mean now, that’s all. Apparently the mental image of playing drunken football with a turkey does wonders for the mind.” 

Sarah nodded silently, but the look on her face screamed skepticism. He chose to play oblivious and turned his attention back to the sink, hoping she’d follow suit. She did.

He hadn’t brought up the episode in the security console since they’d unwittingly stumbled upon the army of insane toy robots, but he certainly hadn’t forgotten about it. Put it out of his mind for a little while, sure. When he was coding, he could forget anything. But that little nugget of sensation kept sneaking its way to the back of his mind. Chuck shifted uncomfortably and forced himself not to look at Sarah. The woman had the perception of a freaking wildcat when she chose. One look and she’d start asking questions, and he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to answer any of them at the moment.

“What’s bothering you, Chuck?”

Too late.

He knew he had to bring it up at some point, of course. It was either that or risk driving himself insane with an onslaught of unanswered questions. But the first thing that came out of his mouth was, “Can you teach me how to pickpocket?”

He nearly blinked at himself. What the hell had that been about?

Apparently Sarah shared his sentiments. She stopped scrubbing and gave him an odd look. “Sorry?”

He was too far in now to back out now. Chuck dropped a plate in the rack. “Pickpocketing. It’s not like I’d steal anything, and you and Casey would snap my fingers off before I even came within two feet of you. But who knows, I may be able to use it on a mission or something.” Sarah raised an eyebrow at that. “Someday? Maybe? Okay, unlikely, but still. Seems like a handy thing to know, or just a neat thing to learn.”

And maybe it wasn’t the best time to bring it up. He only now recalled the look on her face when he’d made the offhanded comment about learning from the Artful Dodger. There must be some bad history there. And indeed, there it was again: a hint of sadness tingeing her carefully guarded expression. He offered an encouraging smile, hoping that it would remove that look forever.

“Come on, Sarah. Just one lesson?” He saw her hesitate and surged on. “You can just tell me the basics while we finish the dishes. I’ll behave, I promise.” He waggled his eyebrows for emphasis, hoping that might seal the deal. 

It worked. Sarah finally broke into a smile. 

“Okay, why not.” She dried her hands on a dishrag before hip-bumping him to clear more space in the kitchen. He obligingly took a step back. “Pay attention, because this is the most important thing you’re ever going to need to know when it comes to pickpocketing.” 

Sarah turned away from the counter and leaned in tantalizingly close. Chuck froze. All brain activity ceased as Sarah pinned him down with what was fast becoming a trademarked intense gaze. She held the look for all of three seconds before straightening, an easy smile on her lips.

“Distraction is key.”

She lifted her hand as she said it; dangling from her fingertips, just as it had more than a week earlier, were his keys. It was practically déjà vu from the night on the beach. Darth Vader was almost leering at him. 

Chuck’s hands flew to his pockets. “Okay, first of all, that was a horrible pun. And second, how did you _do_ that?”

Sarah tossed him the keys. “Like I said, distraction. Psychology says that the human mind can only concentrate on one thing at a time. If your mind’s not on your wallet, then your wallet’s up for grabs. Here you go, by the way.” 

Chuck’s jaw dropped as she nonchalantly handed over his wallet. “What the—when did you—”

Sarah’s smile widened. “It’s all about knowing how to divert attention. An expert pickpocket knows how to create a distraction long enough to steal whatever valuables they’ve located on their mark.” She invaded his personal bubble again; if she noticed the subtle hitch of breath and the way his shoulders tensed, she ignored it. 

“Take this, for example.” Sarah ran her hands down his arms—excruciatingly slowly—from elbow to wrist, her eyes on his the entire time. Her fingertips left individual trails of heat that seared into his skin. “This is a deliberate distraction. So, as the mark, obviously the most important thing you need to do right now is to try your best to avoid it.”

Chuck couldn’t have looked away if he tried. “Honestly, Sarah, you’re kind of making it, ah, impossible.”

“Well, that’s the point. You make it impossible for them to concentrate on anything else, and just like that, your watch is gone.” Sarah dropped his arms and stepped away.

It took a moment for her words to register. When they finally did, Chuck closed his eyes and rubbed his hand over his face. He could practically feel her humming with anticipation.

“Sarah,” he said, measuring his words evenly. He might as well play her game. “What time is it?”

He opened his eyes to see Sarah studying the bulky watch attached to her wrist, the all-too innocent smile threatening to split her face. “Why, it’s 11:26 and thirty three seconds, Chuck.”

“Thank you. Now give me my watch back, you freaking magician.”

“Or,” Sarah said, her smile shifting into something decidedly much more devious, “we could continue your pickpocketing lesson. Really, where’s the fun in just watching and learning?”

Chuck’s face dropped as he watched Sarah pull off his beloved watch and slip it into her pocket. “Oh, that’s cruel. You’re kidding me, right? I can’t do that.”

Sarah shrugged. “You said you wanted to learn.”

Chuck folded his arms across his chest. “Yeah, I just can’t.”

“Why not? You’ve got my permission, Chuck, it’s okay.”

“We’re coworkers.” Chuck shifted his shoulders. “It’s inappropriate. And besides, how exactly do you expect me to distract you? You’re CIA, you sleep with one eye open.”

“I do not.”

“Excuse me, I’ve shared a bed with you, and you do so. And let’s say it works. I’m not saying it’s an actual possibility, but if I do distract you and your magician ways, how do I know you won’t get caught off-guard and accidentally kung fu my butt out into the fountain outside?”

Sarah blinked at him, and for a moment, Chuck swore he caught the faintest hint of a blush. Then she snorted—a very Casey-like snort, which threw him off—and rolled her eyes. 

“Fine. How about this?”

She removed the watch and placed it on the windowsill over the sink. “There. If you can distract me long enough to take— _hey!_ ”

Chuck had already leaped forward, hand outstretched. Sarah whacked his arm away just as his fingers brushed the strap; the watch went flying, skidding across the counter.

“Cheater! I didn’t say you could start yet!”

“Hey, it was a distraction.” They both scrambled for the watch.

“A totally unfair one!”

“Yeah, says the person who cheated at cards for over half an hour!” 

Despite the fact that Chuck was closer to the fallen watch, Sarah beat him to it. She snatched it from the ground a split second before him and straightened with a triumphant smirk. 

Judging by her subsequent reaction, it was safe to say that she wasn’t expecting him to tackle her, but he drove his shoulder into her midsection nonetheless. It probably wasn’t the most appropriate course of action, and there was nothing graceful about the move, but it worked. Sarah gasped and dropped the watch. Chuck lunged forward and caught it just before it hit the ground. He barely had time to heave a sigh of relief, though, before Sarah crashed unceremoniously on top of him. 

And they definitely didn’t have time to get off of each other before Ellie and Awesome breezed through the door.

Whatever his sister had been saying to her boyfriend was immediately cut off as the couple gaped. Chuck counted three seconds before awkwardness exploded into the apartment, and another four before the occupants in said apartment started breathing again. 

Chuck was the first to move. Unfortunately, he hadn’t taken Sarah into account, as she was still mostly on top of him, so he stumbled and went down to one knee. “This isn’t what it looks like!” he said, holding both hands out almost like an umpire to steady himself. Out from under Sarah, he scrambled to his feet and extended a hand down to help her to her feet. “She was teaching me how to pick—actually, never mind. We fell. There. That’s my story.”

“Both of you?” Ellie’s eyes cut from Chuck to Sarah, now standing and batting at a wet patch on her jeans. “On top of each other?”

“There was water on the floor. We were doing the dishes.” Desperate, Chuck pointed to the dishes even now sparkling in the drying rack. “And clumsy me, I slipped, and I took Sarah down with me.”

“Did you break anything?” Ellie asked, peering around her kitchen.

“No, everything’s fine, I promise.”

“Then okay. I’m going to go get changed.” Ellie strolled past.

“I think I hear my phone,” Sarah said apologetically, and fled the room after her roommate.

Awesome strode over to Chuck, a wide grin spreading across his face. He clapped Chuck on the back, the other hand raised high.

“Up top, bro. Awesome.”

Chuck stared.

“Devon, we weren’t—I wasn’t—” 

He let out a resigned sigh and returned the gesture. 

**22 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**ELLIE’S CAR**   
**14:51 PST**

“You know, once upon a time I was perfectly capable of driving myself places,” Chuck grumbled as he stretched the passenger side seatbelt over his lap. He clicked the belt into place and leaned back against the seat, his arms crossed and a dour look on his face.

“Oh, I know.” Ellie applied chapstick in the mirror before she started the car. “But somebody needs to go with you and make sure you don’t take forty years.”

“It’s just delivering a letter.” A letter that sat like a lead weight in the inside pocket of his jacket, crinkling nicely between the seatbelt and his chest. “I’m just going to run over there and drop it off, that’s it. You shouldn’t have to take time to drive me all the way over there and back when you’re in the middle of preparing your great Turkey Day feast.”

“Sarah’s watching the food.” Ellie edged easily into traffic. It wasn’t Casey’s bull-fisted driving style or Sarah’s “only live once” variety of road acrobatics, but Chuck found himself gripping the door handle anyway.

He focused on the conversation to take his mind off of it. “Can Sarah even cook? I mean, have we proved this theory for ourselves? This is, after all, the Thanksgiving Day Feast, and yes, I capitalize that. In addition, it’s the first Thanksgiving Day Feast Morgan will be eating in five years. It’s a special occasion for the little guy. Are we sure we trust Sarah with that? It’s a pretty big deal.”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “Sarah can cook.”

“So she’s not the type to burn water?”

“Even if that were physically possible, no. She’s got a good hand in the kitchen. Which you would know if you left your computer and your Spaghetti-Os behind and came over for dinner every once in awhile.” Ellie, without taking her eyes off of the road, reached over to flick him gently on the ear.

“Hey, Spaghetti-Os are good, I’ll have you know.”

“You need healthy things in your diet. Leafy, green things. Like vegetables.”

Chuck deliberately made a sour face. “Yuck. Why? And just for future reference, they’re putting a full serving of daily vegetables in Spaghetti-Os these days. It says so right on the can.”

“You want to know what else they’re putting in Spaghetti-Os?”

“Geez.” Chuck rolled his eyes. “First Sarah, now you.”

“Well, I’m your physician now. I’ve gotta look out for my baby brother.”

“You’re my neurologist. You have to look out for my mental health, and I don’t think Spaghetti-Os cause brain damage.” Chuck opened his jacket to pull out the letter he’d written the night before. The envelope was already starting to show the wear and tear of stress, as he’d been threading it through his fingers all morning. It had thankfully been in his jacket during the whole pickpocket crash and splash incident, thankfully.

He’d have hated to write it again.

Ellie’s eyes drifted down to it. “What’s it say?” she asked, quietly letting the subject of Chuck’s diet lapse.

Chuck stared at the envelope for a long moment before he answered. “That I’m sorry I didn’t write back five years ago, that I don’t understand.” He flipped the envelope over, ran the side of his thumb along the edge. “That she doesn’t have to write back, just that I needed to do this for myself, and I don’t care what she thinks. It…got a little angry. In the middle.”

“You didn’t call her a poo-poo meanie head, did you?”

“I would like to remind you, for the millionth time, that I was four when I called you that.”

“So?”

“Things you say when you’re four shouldn’t be held against you for the rest of your life.” 

“Yes, but what are big sisters for?” Following Chuck’s directions, Ellie made the turn onto Jill’s street. He hadn’t come here the night before, the first time in four days, to stare at the window. For one thing, he’d figured that Jill hadn’t been there, what with the holiday happening and all. And he’d been so busy writing the letter on his laptop and playing _Call of Duty_ with Casey that he’d fallen asleep on the couch before he could think to come over and sit on his customary street corner.

Ellie pulled up into that parking spot and took a deep breath. “Want me to come in with you?”

“No, I’m okay.” Chuck unhooked his seatbelt.

“I’ll wait out here for you. Take your time.”

Chuck climbed into the cool air of the November day, fingers clenched tight on the letter. It felt strange after all those weeks of just sitting by the curb, to go through the physical motions of crossing the street, stepping over the sidewalk and up to the front walk, but he didn’t dare pause with Ellie watching him from the car. He just tensed his shoulders, hoping that the rigidity of his body language didn’t scream that he was a threat to any passersby.

He lucked out at the front of the apartment building, as somebody was coming out just as he reached the entrance. Once he was inside and away from Ellie, he took a few seconds to stand and breathe. He knew the layout of the building, so there wasn’t much need to look around. Jill’s apartment was on the fourth floor. He could take the stairs or the elevator. He chose the stairs since they would take just a little longer. If he dragged his feet at all on the way up, well, he was allowed to go at his own damned pace.

Finally, he reached Jill’s floor. He took a deep breath by the stairwell door, fingered the letter, and told himself to get a move on. It was only about twenty feet between the stairwell and Jill’s apartment, but those twenty feet seemed to both drag and blink by. Chuck closed his eyes and opened them to see himself standing in front of Apartment 419.

“This is it,” he muttered sotto voce. He hadn’t brought tape with him to stick the envelope on her door, so he knelt down to push the letter under her door.

He heard footsteps.

Chuck stilled, halfway bent down. Were those coming from the hallway or inside the apartment? His heart began to race, jackhammering against his ribcage and making his hands shake. Carefully, quickly, he pressed his ear to the door.

Definitely inside the apartment.

Jill hadn’t gone home for the holiday. And she was coming right for the door.

Oh, God.

He couldn’t face her right now, even though he’d written her a three-page letter. Or maybe _because_ he’d written her a three-page letter. Oh, God, Chuck thought again, shooting to his feet and backing up until his shoulder blades bumped into the wall opposite Jill’s door. He had no idea what he would _say_.

He cast his eyes desperately for an escape route, any escape route. Just a long hallway, though Jill was near the corner, and she would have to turn the opposite way to get to the stairs and elevator. Chuck debated. Would she take the stairs or the elevator? 

What if it wasn’t Jill? What if it was a roommate? Chuck bolted for the corner, intending to hide until the threat passed. Something made him stop cold.

What if it was a boyfriend?

How did he feel about that? Shouldn’t there be some sort of raging jealousy, some sort of desire to punch the guy in the face, maybe hate him?

The doorknob turned. Chuck let out a very small yelp and dove behind the corner.

Moment of truth, he thought, edging around the corner just a little bit. Would he see Jill again, just like he had at the Stanford game? Would it hurt because it didn’t hurt? Or would he be facing the new beau in his ex-girlfriend’s life? His fingers flexed on the corner’s edge as the door opened.

It was a man that came out. Chuck felt his insides deflate even as his heart sped up.

Then he felt his eyes narrow.

The guy had to be at least thirty years Jill’s senior. That made no sense for boyfriend, unless Jill had somehow acquired a taste for silver foxes in the past few years. And he was dressed impeccably in a dark suit, with a maroon shirt and matching tie that actually looked rather dapper. Relative? No, Chuck thought. He’d met Jill’s family and they were comfortably suburban types. Her father wore black socks with sandals.

So what the hell was this guy doing in Jill’s apartment?

The intruder was clutching a binder, Chuck saw. Jill’s binders had been infamous during their Stanford days, packed full to the edges to the point of being overfull, chocked with loose papers, the filing system inside known only to her. She always decorated each quarter’s binders with a theme: Futurama characters, her favorite elements, the Partridge family. The binder the man held now had a doodle of a lever on it.

Why was this man stealing one of Jill’s school binders?

As Chuck watched, the man fumbled in his pocket for something. Keys? Indeed, the man drew out a huge key ring that had to have contained at least thirty keys, all of which looked alike.

 _Distraction is key_.

It had seemed like a horrible pun at the time. It still was. But Chuck could hear Sarah’s voice in his head now, urging him onward. His fingers itched. He could stroll by, grab the guy’s wallet, see who he was. Make sure that nobody was doing anything to Jill. Innocently drop said wallet off at the police station with a claim that he’d found it.

_An expert pickpocket knows how to create a distraction long enough to steal whatever valuables they’ve located on their mark._

In the hallway, the man dropped his keys.

Oh, come on, the sensible part of Chuck, the one that was telling him to stay put and keep his not-inconsiderable nose out of it, screamed. The universe is just mocking me. The rest of him took a deep breath.

 _If your mind’s not on your wallet, then your wallet’s up for grabs._

I can’t believe I’m about to do what I’m about to do, Chuck marveled at himself. He took a deep breath, stepped around the corner, just as the man bent to retrieve his keys.

 _Here I go._ Time to see if Sarah’s lesson had paid off.


	29. Asking for Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. — _Thomas Alva Edison_

**22 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**SUNNYVALE APARTMENTS, FOURTH FLOOR**   
**15:17 PST**

Don’t make eye contact. Remain as inconspicuous as possible.

Chuck was grateful that he’d thrown on a hat for the pre-feast festivities at Ellie’s apartment. He’d planned to change into a nice button-down shirt and slacks later for the meal, but a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans had sufficed for watching football with Awesome and for…wrestling in the kitchen with Sarah.

And now really wasn’t the time to get distracted.

He was supposed to be pickpocketing somebody, after all.

Oh, dear God.

Chuck deliberately relaxed his walk to a stroll as he rounded the corner and started to head toward the man retrieving his keys outside Jill’s door. No need to draw attention to himself, he thought, by walking like a freaking Cyberman. Though Sarah hadn’t said as much, he figured that in pickpocketing, distractions had to be controlled. Distract only how you want to distract.

So he grabbed his phone out of his pocket and pretended to thumb a text message as he walked. He pretended he didn’t see the guy in the hallway until it was too late and he’d already knocked the binder to the ground. “Oh, dude,” he said, hoping his voice wasn’t too loud. He couldn’t hear himself over the rushing of his own heartbeat in his ears. “I’m so sorry! Here, let me help.”

“I’ve got it.” The man snatched the binder out of Chuck’s hands quickly. Too quickly. 

“Sorry, man,” Chuck said in his best “California Bro” voice, the male counterpart to Sarah’s Valley Girl impression. “Like, really, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” The man looked pained.

“’Kay.” Chuck popped up to his feet and walked away, deliberately muttering under his breath and hoping it wasn’t as obvious to the other guy that he was sweating profusely. He forced himself to keep up the act all the way to the elevator and through the ensuing wait for the elevator car to arrive. It seemed to eons, though he knew it probably wasn’t more than ten to twenty seconds.

Only when he was completely out of sight did he collapse against the back of the elevator and draw in huge gulps of air like a drowning man. Oh, dear God, he repeated, blinking sluggishly as the doors began to trundle close. Had he really just done that? And gotten away cleanly?

“Hold the elevator?”

Crap.

Chuck felt more sweat sprout, coating the first layer already present. His eyes cut desperately to the “close door,” but his finger shook as it hovered. Don’t draw unnecessary attention to yourself, his brain scolded.

He stuck his other hand in between the doors, forcing them to open again. Jill’s intruder climbed into the elevator with him, and didn’t even bother to thank him. Well, that was a bit rude.

The ride down to the ground floor took ages longer than the wait for the elevator. Chuck imagined entire civilizations being born, going through depressions, golden ages. The rise and fall of entire empires. Stars erupting into life. Supernovas. Black holes. He kept his stare firmly on the screen of his phone, though he was sure he was just typing gibberish. He was in the same elevator with a man he’d pickpocketed. What did they expect? Shakespearean verse? 

In his haste and terror, he accidentally sent an actual text message winging off into the ether, and hoped it wasn’t to one of the bosses’ numbers he kept in his phone.

The elevator continued to sink slowly, slowly down. Chuck didn’t dare outright look at the other passenger, though he sneaked plenty of glances at the man with his peripheral vision. Did he look angry? Unpleasant? Or was Chuck projecting?

What the hell did this guy want with Jill’s binder? Did Jill know him? Was he a coworker, a fellow grad student? He looked more like he might be a professor, except his urbane suit with its matching pocket square didn’t exactly shout anything professorial. Chuck’s eyes drifted over to the binder. What was in there, anyway, that it had to be picked up on Thanksgiving?

The man looked up and Chuck’s eyes cut back to his cell phone in panic. But the man was only checking his hair in the mirrored doors of the elevator. Even though he was handsome, it probably didn’t equate to the two years he’d scared off of Chuck’s life.

Chuck clutched his phone tighter and prayed for the world’s longest elevator ride to end. So much for being inconspicuous. His hands were shaking so obviously that he didn’t know how the whole world wasn’t staring at him.

When the car touched down on the ground floor, Chuck held in the breath of relief only through sheer force of will. He wasn’t sure his legs would work, as his knees had turned to water, but he was able to follow the other man out of the elevator without walking like a puppet with jerky strings. He considered it a success, especially since the man didn’t cast him a second look on the way out of the building.

To put some distance between them, Chuck stopped by the mail slots and pretended to dig for his keys. The instant the man left, he let the relieved breath gush out, and sagged partially against the wall. One quick glance around to make sure there were no security cameras later, he pulled out his prize.

Damn it.

He hadn’t snatched the wallet. Instead, he’d grabbed the stranger’s cell phone. Though phones could tell more about a person than a wallet, they were also infinitely easier to track. He should just page through it, wipe his fingerprints, and leave it somewhere like the elevator so that it would look like the man had dropped it.

He swiped his thumb over the viewscreen and frowned.

Now that was interesting. Chuck knew some people locked their phones, but this looked like pretty heavy security when a series of images popped up across the screen. Not exactly congruent with somebody who would be going through a grad student’s apartment on Thanksgiving. Of course, something had been off about the man from the first glance. Maybe the suit put him on edge. Chuck wasn’t sure what it said when a pocket square matched a shirt perfectly. 

He should just drop this, but…

Five years later or not, he still cared for Jill. He owed it to her to make sure that she was okay. So he shrugged and pulled the phone’s battery out so that it couldn’t be tracked. He slipped both pieces into his pocket. He’d figure out how to hack it later, or visit Morgan for a burner phone or a GPS jammer or something.

Maybe he should wait for Saturday or Sunday. Tomorrow was Black Friday, which meant so much potential for things going horribly, horribly wrong. Chuck scowled as he left the apartment building, his prize heavy in his pocket. He couldn’t ask Sarah to pick him up a burner phone without arousing suspicion, and he didn’t want her to know he’d used her pickpocketing lessons on a complete stranger. The same thing went for Casey, which only left Ellie or himself.

But Ellie was frowning at him when he climbed into the car. He paused as he reached for his seatbelt. “What? What is it?”

“This!” She reached over and yanked a white sheet out of his jacket: the letter. “You didn’t deliver it?”

“Oh.” He’d completely forgotten the letter in the terror and thrill of pickpocketing the stranger. “Uh, right. I decided that it was enough that I’d written it.”

Ellie squinted at him.

“Really, El,” he said, holding both hands up in entreaty. “What’s the use of disrupting her life now? I wrote the letter, got my closure, and I don’t need to make her go back five years when she’s moved on.”

“You got your closure.” Ellie’s skepticism alone made it a question.

Chuck forced himself to nod his head. “Sure. It feels great.”

He could tell she wasn’t buying it. The critical doctor’s eye would have picked up the fact that he was sweating, and that his knuckles were slightly whitened. There were probably a thousand other tells he didn’t know about himself that she had already categorized. It was why he’d never been able to play poker with her. She simply saw too much.

But she sighed now. “Fine, okay. You got your closure. Either way, it’ll take time, so there’s no reason to expect a miracle.” She tossed the letter back on his lap.

Chuck picked it up and slid it back into his jacket pocket. It didn’t seem as important as it had all morning, now that he had some sort of mystery to solve. In a strange way, it _was_ like getting closure. He’d left her behind to go to Basic all those years ago—and he knew she hadn’t been happy that her boyfriend was leaving—and now he could do her one last favor even though she had ended things. And it was a much better parting gift than some stupid letter that he probably hadn’t written well, anyway.

But looking at the way his sister held the steering wheel in a death grip on the way home, he figured it wasn’t a good time to ask if she’d maybe go pick grab a few things from an electronics store for him. So Chuck remained silent.

**23 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**SAN LEANDRO MEMORIAL PARK**   
**07:29 PST**

Maybe most of the world was flocking to retail hell, or they were just sleeping, but whatever the cause, the park behind Chuck’s apartment—normally a hub of activity and runners even at 7:30 in the morning—was all but deserted. Chuck didn’t mind. Even though he could run a mile and a half comfortably by now, he was nowhere near Sarah and Awesome’s pace, and he didn’t like having an audience.

Another benefit of having the park mostly to himself was that he didn’t need music to keep him from focusing on people and space and the thousands of problems that came with both. He’d set up a playlist during his first week of jogging, but some days, he didn’t like turning his iPod on. Something about the sound of his own breath, labored and ragged toward the end of the run, made him feel better than any song ever recorded. Like he was actually accomplishing something. More often than not, he left his earphones in so that people wouldn’t be tempted to talk to him, but he focused more on the sounds from inside his own head.

Today, he had felt comfortable to avoid even the earphones, which meant he heard her coming.

Sarah didn’t speak as she came up behind him on the path, instantly matching her pace to his (much slower) jog. She gave him a nod, merely a little forward jut of the chin, and they both concentrated on their feet or the path ahead. She hadn’t brought the mp3 player he’d set up for her, either. Had they both been expecting each other? Chuck raised his eyebrows, questioningly.

“Creatures of habit,” Sarah said, smiling. “Plus, that was a lot of turkey yesterday.”

But really, really good turkey.” They made the turn onto the main straightaway that would take them around the park, speeding up just a little bit. Chuck shoulder-bumped her. “I was right, right?”

Sarah grinned as she adjusted her path to compensate. “I know better than to doubt you about Ellie’s cooking by now.”

“Though the pies were really, really good, too. It was funny how everybody didn’t want to eat the lemon meringue because it looked too pretty. Where’d you learn to bake a pie like that?”

“CIA baking school.”

“Man, that would be so awesome if it were really true.”

“How do you know it isn’t?” Sarah grinned over at him and fell quiet. A quarter mile passed in comfortable silence, letting Chuck focus on his stride. He knew Sarah had drastically reduced her own pace, but he forced himself not to mind because it felt nice having somebody to run with. Like they were just normal people, hanging out in the park before work. Not that either had to go into the office today. Sometimes it was great being an employee of the government. Beckman and Graham couldn’t force them to work, though it was hinted strongly that they should probably spend at least a couple of hours in the office.

Chuck decided he was going to ignore it. He had other plans.

Beside him, Sarah cleared her throat. He glanced over. “What was up with Ellie yesterday?”

“Oh.” Had it been that obvious? “Um, right. She was displeased with me because I didn’t deliver the letter.”

“You wrote it?”

“Yeah, a couple nights ago. While playing ‘Call of Duty’ with Casey.”

Sarah’s stride slowed just for a second. “You got Casey to play a video game? Willingly? And without breaking his thumbs?”

“One, that would defeat the purpose, and two, yes. He had a good time once he figured out how to use the controller, too.” The memory made him grin.

Sarah seemed to take a minute to absorb that, staring at the ground as they ran along, switching from sidewalk to cedar-chipped path to cut across the park toward Chuck’s apartment. They would do another round of the park before their run was complete. “So that’s where you went yesterday? To deliver the letter?”

“What, you weren’t sitting at your computer, tracking my every movement?” Chuck smiled to remove the sting from his words.

“Ha.” Sarah flicked a glance at him. “Why didn’t you deliver the letter?”

Because I was too busy pickpocketing some random stranger with a terrifying amount of security on his phone, Chuck thought, not looking at her. She a scary ability to read his mind when she chose. “Didn’t need to,” he said, keeping his eyes on the path. “It was enough that I wrote it.”

He felt her watch his profile for a minute, but she just seemed to shrug to herself and focus back on her run. “Okay. Do you feel better now?”

“I feel less like crap, but I don’t know if you’d necessarily call it _better_.”

“Small steps, Chuck. Small steps.”

Chuck gave her a half-smile. “One step at a time?”

Sarah cuffed him on the arm, a gentle swat. Chuck was grateful that the conversation lapsed, as his breath grew heavier and his throat took on a sickly sandpaper feeling that meant he was becoming winded. He’d told Dr. Anton the truth: Sarah wasn’t the type to judge. But it was still a matter of pride that he keep up without tremendous difficulty. He forced his breathing to stay even, pulling in air through his nose and puffing out through his mouth. Sarah, next to him, seemed like she was hardly even breathing hard. Of course not. This was probably like a brisk walk to her.

In fact, she nudged his arm, and her eyes sparkled. “C’mon. Let’s go faster.”

“You’re trying to kill me.”

“You’re strong enough. Just keep up.” One last grin and she took off. He yelped and sped up. Even on his best days, he would never outlast Sarah, but he did have the benefit of incredibly long legs. He should at least get _some_ use out of his lanky build.

So he put on an extra burst of speed and—finally—passed her. He let out a whoop and threw his hands over his head.

Sarah laughed, catching up easily. “Nutball.”

They settled into a pace that was quite a bit more taxing than their earlier jog. “Of course. You weren’t just letting me win, were you?”

“Chuck, you’re like six-four and you’re fast. You won on your own power.” 

“Fantastic. Then you’ll excuse me for a sec?” Without waiting for a reply, Chuck slowed to a walk and put his hands on his waist, taking in deep gulps of oxygen. Sarah stopped ahead of him, walking in circles until he caught up. “Sorry.” His voice was now hoarse.

“Why are you sorry?”

“You’re not done with your run yet, you shouldn’t wait for me.” Chuck waved, making little shooing motions with one hand while the other stayed on his waist. “Go on. I’m sure you’ve got another marathon,” and he took a deep breath, “to cover while the rest of us all lie in bed like the lazy slugs we are. Move it.”

“Ha. I’m not going anywhere.” Indeed, Sarah matched her stride to his yet again. “I ran a few miles before you got out here, and I’ll jog home from here, too. I’m fine.”

“If you say so.” 

“I say so.” They started the last circuit of the park as a cool-down, and Sarah glanced at him out of the side of her eye again. Chuck could tell by just the angle of her head that she was studying him. He hastily wiped some of the sweat from his face. “You’ve come a long way since you started running,” she said.

“All three weeks of it?”

“Seriously, Chuck, it’s impressive.”

He didn’t really think so. Running was something to add to the Tai Chi and the weight lifting. It helped him rein in his mind and keep his emotions that much more controlled so that they wouldn’t spill out everywhere and ruin everything all the time. At the rate he was picking up new activities, he would simply be able to function because he wouldn’t have time for anything else.

It was depressing at the same time as it was comforting.

Sarah disappeared behind a tree and reappeared on the other side with a water bottle. “Didn’t want to carry it,” she said as he raised his eyebrows. “Nobody’s in the park anyway.”

“You’re a brave woman.”

“Occupational hazard.” After she’d taken a long pull, Sarah handed him the bottle. They continued their slow walk toward Chuck’s place, passing the water bottle back and forth.

“Chuck, is something else going on?” Sarah watched him as she took a long gulp from the water bottle. She wiped the bottom half of her face on her T-shirt, exposing a few inches of smooth belly skin.

Chuck stilled for half a second. Did she somehow know? Had she figured out that he’d stolen a complete stranger’s cell phone?

 _How_?

He bought a second by taking the water bottle and drinking deeply. If the cell phone led to something dangerous, he rationalized, he would have to tell Sarah or call the police, but until then, this was his foolish expenditure. He’d prefer to keep his odd bit of thievery to himself, unless it panned out into something that required help.

So he shook his head. “Nothing out of the ordinary, no.”

“Okay.” Sarah took the bottle back, drank, and capped it. She tossed it from hand to hand as she studied him one last time. He made sure to carefully meet her eyes; whatever Sarah saw there seemed to tide her over, for she shrugged. “I’d better get a move on.”

“Yeah. Things to do, people to karate chop, poor innocent dummies to beat up.”

“Actually, I’m going to sleep. Sometimes working for the government has its benefits.”

“Sarah Walker actually sleeps?”

“Even robots have to recharge, right?” 

“Yes,” Chuck said, nodding sagely. “And to dream of robot sheep.”

“As long as they’re not rabbits.” Sarah shot him a grin of the dazzling variety, gave him a high-five, and jogged off toward her apartment. He watched her go, trying to fight off his guilt. He hadn’t needed to tell Sarah. They weren’t joined at the hip, after all. He could make decisions for himself, and if he wanted to pry into Jill’s life, that was his business. Well, his and Jill’s, but Jill wasn’t here, and what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

Still, a trickle of guilt made his chest hurt as he turned and made the trudge to his apartment.

**23 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**RADIO SHACK (NEAR BUY MORE)**   
**15:35 PST**

“I was surprised you called, man.” Morgan hopped from one foot to the other and swung around, never one to stand still. By all rights, the bearded man should have been exhausted, since he’d told Chuck that he’d been forced to show up at Buy More at three a.m. to work outside crowd control. But Chuck had already hauled him away from bothering the worker by the Zune display, stopped an X-Box versus PS3 round of fisticuffs before it could start, and had prevented the aforementioned Zune worker from filing a sexual harassment lawsuit. Morgan looked like he could happily keep up the string of calamity for hours. It probably had something to do with the fact that he’d had a Red Bull or four at Chuck’s place before their trek to Radio Shack.

But there was no way Chuck could handle an electronics store on Black Friday by himself, and telling Casey and Sarah about his activities with Jill’s stranger’s phone was simply not an option.

Chuck didn’t look up from the two amplifiers he was studying. “Yeah?” he asked. “Why’s that?”

“You’ve been a ghost lately, man!” Morgan poked at a coil of wire. “I had Donkey Kong all set up and ready to go the other night and then you poofed.”

Chuck felt a flare of insult. “Poofed? Excuse me, I have never ‘poofed’ in my life.”

“Semantics. You stood me up. And it was not cool.”

“I know, I know.” Chuck frowned. “I’m really sorry about it, too, but I just—I have this new client with…insane expectations.” He felt a bit sick that it was so easy to come up with the lies that would explain all of his actions, but even if he wanted to tell Morgan about his strange life with the CIA, he couldn’t. He’d spent the past week and a half dealing with the fallout of telling Ellie, who could theoretically provide something to the team. Or, realistically, _Sarah_ had spent the past week and a half dealing with said fallout.

If he told Morgan, he imagined that Sarah would instantaneously develop Village of the Damned-like abilities to destroy him using only the intensity of her glare.

So he smiled apologetically, hoping Morgan would buy the act. “I gave myself an impossible deadline because it’s a client I want to keep, so, again, I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

As he knew it would, Morgan’s face shifted from mutinous to only slightly-miserable. “Yeah, yeah, I understand,” Morgan said, rolling his eyes and kicking his heel against the toe of his other shoe. “And you know, if you ever need help with anything about that…”

“Thanks, buddy.”

“No, I mean, you should probably ask somebody else. I unfortunately lack the skill set.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Chuck said, grinning. He dropped the amplifier into his basket and shifted his way into the next aisle. The morning had been spent researching GPS jammers on one monitor while Schnookie McSarahkins ran rampant through the southern hemisphere of Athinei on the other screen (Sarah had yet to best him at their computer hacking game). He’d drawn his own set of plans just going off of what he knew the local Radio Shack had, even though he knew it was possible that he could spend hours designing a GPS jammer for a two-minute hack in the end.

Either way, the drive to know, to make sure that nobody was messing with Jill, was simply too strong to ignore. So he needed to gather the materials and build the thing. The problem lay in that gathering said materials included facing crowds. A lot of crowds. He’d called Morgan, hoping his Buy More shift ended early enough to make him a wingman. It hadn’t, but Morgan had come anyway.

“So what are you making? You never said.”

“GPS jammer.” Chuck spotted another item on his list and dropped it into the basket. He moved on to the next aisle, Morgan following.

The other man’s brow wrinkled a bit. “Can’t you just buy those ready-made?”

“Sure. But this is cheaper.”

“But you can expense that.”

“To whom? I own my company.” Besides, he didn’t want Sarah and Casey wondering _why_ he needed a ready-made GPS jammer, even if it would come in pretty damn handy in the future. If he brought it up, he’d have to tell them about the fact that he’d stolen some stranger’s cell phone.

He’d pass, thanks.

He finally located the last item on his list and, basket full, made his way to the check-out. Morgan followed. “What are you even trying to jam, anyway? Don’t you do _computer_ security? Like software?”

Chuck had to think quickly. “The client’s, ah, paranoid, and he wants me to hack his cell phone for him to see if his security’s good, but he’s going to try and track it at the same time.”

“Whoa. Crazy, dude.”

“Yeah.” Chuck set his basket on the counter and smiled at the clerk, grateful that it wasn’t the clerk from the Zune incident. He pulled out his wallet and thumbed through the twenties he’d picked up from the ATM.

Morgan leaned around him to poke through the basket. “What kind of jam you using?” he said.

“Shh!” Chuck hissed, and shot the clerk an innocent grin. She rolled her eyes, but the fatigue of Black Friday sales either ensured that she wouldn’t care, or she hadn’t actually heard Morgan’s comment.

Morgan, meanwhile, was undeterred. “You’re using raspberry, right?”

“What?”

“Because it’s a sacrilege to use anything but raspberry, you know.”

“Morgan, I—” Chuck finally caught the reference and broke off with a laugh. “Yeah,” he said after a minute. “It’s raspberry.”

“Good.”

**23 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: UPSTAIRS**   
**17:56 PST**

“Good news!” Morgan plopped into the visitor’s chair in Chuck’s office and immediately swung his legs over the side of the chair, completely at home. “We’re _just_ inside the delivery radius for the Bamboo Dragon.”

Are we?” Chuck raised his head from his project, skeptical.

“Well, we were once I promised the driver an extra five with the tip. Speaking of which…” Morgan looked pained.

Chuck had to laugh. “This one’s on me, yeah.”

“Awesome.” Morgan turned his attention back to his PSP. 

Because Morgan had elected to go back to Castle and keep Chuck company while he worked on the jammer, only one monitor sat on Chuck’s desk, and the building once again resembled a normal office building. The retina scanner was hidden by a gold Pacific Securities LLC sign next to the front door, Sarah’s desk was a clean expanse of wood, and there wasn’t any weaponry, automatic, semiautomatic, or even sharp, lying around, though Chuck had made sure that Casey’s door was locked. Morgan had been to the office before, so the urge to explore probably wasn’t present, but Chuck didn’t trust the shorter man not to wander.

Scary things lay beyond Casey’s door.

He hunkered over the jammer, which was already starting to take shape. It would take most of the evening to build and an hour or two more to perfect and tweak, but Morgan seemed happy to just thumb away the time on his PSP. It was just like high school, Chuck thought as he twigged a wire and set the soldering gun in its holster, only Morgan wasn’t playing a GameBoy and he wasn’t working on some science fair project for a good grade or a scholarship. Instead, he was trying to figure out if his ex-girlfriend had somehow attracted the attention of bad men.

So maybe it wasn’t anything like high school.

He knew he was being ridiculous. Jill Roberts, graduate student, was a sensible woman. The thought that she’d gotten involved in something less-than-kosher was downright absurd. And attracting shady attention? She was the girl next door. She was sweet, and charming, and so incredibly smart.

If he couldn’t bring himself to actually drag himself out of the car and talk to her every time he drove over to her apartment, he could at least do this for her.

“Hey, wow, are you, like, reciting Macbeth in your head or something?”

Morgan’s voice drew him out of his concentration on the half-finished jammer. He blinked. “Huh?”

“You looked really grim there for a minute, dude.” Morgan frowned at Chuck. “Everything okay? Something you need to talk to Dr. Morgan about?” He drew a box in the air with a finger. “The doctor,” he said, and flipped an imaginary sign, “is in.”

Chuck shook his head to clear the haze. “I’m okay. Just concentrating.”

“Okay, dude. If you say so.” Morgan squinted at him one last time, but returned to his PSP. 

Chuck had to smile at that as he reached across his desk for one of the paper towels he’d stacked up in the corner so that they would be on hand just in case. “What time did you say,” he started to ask, but froze midway through his sentence.

The Scooby door swung open.

It had squeaked, back when they’d first moved into the building, but Chuck had grown so frustrated during one of the data dumps that he had attacked the door with WD-40. He couldn’t help but be grateful for it now, especially since Sarah stepped halfway out.

“What’d you say?” Morgan didn’t look up from the PSP.

“Uh—” Chuck blinked heavily a few times. Behind Morgan, Sarah froze, her gaze locked on Morgan. She looked around, seemed to judge it unsafe to run for the exit, and crept backwards into the depths of Castle again. “Uh, yeah, I wanted to know when they said the food would get here?”

“They said half an hour.” Morgan tilted the game, his tongue poking out of the corner of his lip as he tried for more HP. “Maybe longer. They’re kinda busy on Fridays.”

“Uh-huh.” Chuck waved frantically for Sarah to shut the door.

She gave him a pointed look, her eyes swinging to the back of Morgan’s head—what is he doing here?—but she obeyed.

This time, the door creaked.

“What was that?” Morgan asked, lifting his head.

Chuck’s fingers spasmed on the edge of the desk, but he gave Morgan his best innocent look. “What was what?”

“You didn’t hear that?” Morgan twisted around in his seat, but the Scooby door had closed fully. Apparently finding nothing out of place, he faced forward again. “Weird.”

“The building makes strange noises sometimes,” Chuck lied. “It gets a little creepy late at night.”

“Maybe you have a ghost. I definitely felt like we weren’t alone for a minute there.” Morgan put on his “clairvoyant” face, an expression Chuck also remembered well from high school. “It’d be cool having a ghost.”

Chuck just nodded, wondering exactly how he could get Morgan out of the room long enough for Sarah to escape. His eyes fell on the mini-fridge in the corner, and he sighed. It really was unfair, what he was about to do. “Hey,” he said, hating himself, “you want anything to drink? I’ve got Red Bull and Mountain Dew and—”

Morgan shot straight up in his seat. “Why’d you say that name?” he demanded, scowling. “You know what that name does to me!”

“Oh.” Chuck feigned surprise and injected real apology into his manner. “Oh, man. I’m so sorry. I forgot, I swear—”

“Whatever. Now I gotta pee.” Morgan rolled his eyes as he stalked out of the room and headed toward Castle’s upstairs bathroom. The instant he’d left the office, Chuck leaped to the Scooby door and wrenched it open. 

“Sarah!” he hissed into Castle. “He’s gone!”

He heard footsteps on the stairs and a second later, Sarah’s head, followed by the rest of her, popped into view on the stairs. She gave him an aggravated look as she squeezed by him. “What is he doing here?”

“Hanging out. What are _you_ doing here? It’s Friday night.”

Sarah’s eyes cut down to the floor. “Ah…Ellie.”

A grin blossomed across Chuck’s face. “Don’t tell me bad-ass super-spy Sarah Walker is afraid of my big sister.”

“I’m not.” Sarah glared. “I just—she wanted to go shopping.”

“I thought you liked shopping.”

“I do, but—what’s that?” Sarah tried to lean around Chuck to get a good look at the GPS jammer in pieces on the desk, but Chuck swiftly side-stepped, blocking her view. She frowned at him. “What are you working on, Chuck?”

“A new project. I don’t want to jinx it.” Chuck felt sweat, sweat that had nothing to do with crowds or open spaces or new social situations, begin to slide down his spine. Indeed, Sarah’s frown deepened. “I’ll tell you all about it if it works, I promise. But unless you want another three hours of Morgan calling you Miss Romanova, you’d probably better flee.”

“God, don’t remind me.” Sarah gave him one last swift and suspicious look, and dashed from the room. Chuck didn’t blame her. Morgan had been almost as happy to see Sarah has he had the Thanksgiving turkey the day before. Chuck imagined that Sarah hadn’t minded the references to her Halloween costume…for about the first hour or so. 

She had also timed her exit well. Not twenty seconds later, Morgan wandered back in, still drying his hands on his pants. He paused in the doorway to sniff the air appreciatively. “Is it just me or does it smell like gardenias in here?”

Chuck laughed uneasily as he headed back to his desk. “Must be just you,” he said.

As he hunkered back into his project, he allowed himself one last regret that it was growing easier and easier to lie to the people he loved, even if Ellie and Awesome knew some version of the truth. Before he could really get into the self-recrimination of that thought, however, a loose connection on the jammer grabbed his interest, and he slipped comfortably into work mode, content to ignore both Morgan and his own nagging doubts as he set to work on the device that would maybe let him help out his ex-girlfriend.

**24 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: UPSTAIRS**   
**03:02 PST**

One last connection…and done.

Immediately, tension filtered out of Chuck’s shoulders, trickling down out of his neck. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in and reached up to peel off the magnifying goggles. He set them on the desk with a weary thud. His watch had beeped the hour at him, but it just didn’t feel like three a.m. Unless it was, he thought as he sagged back in his chair, giving himself just a moment to rest, three a.m. on the morning after he’d gone through a condensed week of finals and run a marathon. There was no inventor’s high to ride now, nothing but his own weariness, a low-grade tension headache, and pains throughout his neck and shoulders. He should be sleeping. 

Instead, he pulled his phone from his pocket and set it on the desk. Time to test it, he thought, and see if he really was as good at inventing as he hoped.

First, though, he removed his watch and set it in Sarah’s office, as far away from the jammer as he could. He’d designed the jammer to have a very narrow radius, possibly even smaller than his desk space, but if the GPS in the watch suddenly went offline, Casey and Sarah would be alerted. He didn’t think either of them would take kindly to the fact that he was trying to hack a total stranger’s cell phone, and the fact that it was three in the morning would probably just send Casey into apoplectic fits of rage. For a soldier, Casey sure didn’t take well to loss of sleep.

He returned to his desk and took a deep breath. “Please don’t let this blow up in my face,” he prayed to the wiring, gaming, and inventing gods. He squeezed one eye shut, just for good measure, and flipped the switch.

No explosion.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Chuck said needlessly, opening both eyes. He checked a couple of the connections to make sure that he hadn’t screwed anything up, took a deep breath, and finally worked up the nerve to pick up his phone and check the bars in the corner.

No service. It had worked.

Chuck felt only a narrow sliver of the exultation he should have been feeling, to have an invention go from the page to a complete success in less than twenty-four hours. Sure, he had just modified some plans he’d found on the internet and had given them his own touch, but still, turning a device on and actually having it work correctly the first time? That rarely ever happened.

He stared at the lack of bars in the corner of his phone. Should he keep going? Ride this inventor’s wave as far as it would travel until he crashed? He might have, in the bunker, but then, his bed had almost always been literally in reach. If he stayed at Castle overnight, Casey might question him.

He would have to return to the cell phone tomorrow. Carefully, he began to pack up so that he could go home and crash. Jill probably wouldn’t get home from visiting her parents until Sunday, so he wouldn’t have to start keeping an eye on the place until then. In the meantime, he had Sergei Ezersky’s computer to break and a cell phone to hack. It was going to be a long weekend. 


	30. Borrowing Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent. — _John Donne_

**24 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CASTLE: DOJO**   
**08:32 PST**

Even though he’d given himself an extra hour of sleep as a bonus for completing the cell phone jammer correctly the first time, Chuck found Casey working out in the dojo when he came in. The other man grunted a greeting from the bench press. Chuck nodded back, automatically moving to spot. There wasn’t any need for either to speak as Casey finished out his set, wiped down the bench, and switched so that he could spot for Chuck. Even though it varied from his preferred routine, Chuck didn’t want to mess with any feelings of solidarity from Casey, so he took some of the weight off of the bar and settled onto the bench.

“What are your plans for today, Bartowski?” Casey asked as Chuck shifted his shoulders to center himself onto the bench.

“You’re asking for surveillance purposes, I’m guessing?”

Casey’s shrug said it all: Why else?

Chuck spaced his hands out on the bar, took a deep breath, and began to lower and lift the bar. Casey had taken the time to give him a few tips a couple of weeks before (more in the form of “You’re doing it wrong, doofus,” than anything constructive), so he kept his movements fluid and controlled. His breathing stayed in perfect rhythm with the repetitions. He said, grunting more than anything, “You’ve got an easy day. I’m gonna work from home and crack that hard drive we stole from the Ezersky estate. There hasn’t, ah, been any fallout on that, has there?” 

“I’ve been keeping an ear out. Nobody seems to know who’s behind it, and Ezersky’s been pointing fingers at everybody. But, hmm, no surveillance from that night means there’s no proof.” Casey’s voice held a vicious smugness. “Well, almost no surveillance.”

Chuck’s rhythm hitched. “Oh, crap, did the robo-rabbits actually have cameras in them?”

“Nope. There’s just one incriminating photo.”

“Whew, because you know, I don’t think the nerds would ever forgive me that I forgot my Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch and—did you say incriminating?” Chuck all but threw the bar onto its holster and sat up.

Casey chuckled as he dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone, thumbing quickly through the menus. Without a word, he handed the phone over. 

Chuck could only be grateful that he had indeed put the bar away before he’d taken a look. His cheeks, probably flushed from the workout, no doubt drained of all color. “Ah, Sarah hasn’t seen this, has she?”

“Nope.” Grinning now, Casey took the phone back. The picture was of a grainy Chuck and Sarah, still in their masks, passed out on Sergei Ezersky’s front porch. Casey must have snapped it while running in to grab the unconscious agents.

It might not have been an incriminating picture, except that Chuck had landed face-first…right on Sarah’s chest. So it was a very, very good thing that she hadn’t seen the picture, especially since she’d passed out before him. Even so, dread began to fill Chuck’s midsection.

Casey snickered. “You annoy me too much and this may end up in Graham’s mailbox someday.”

The dread began to boil. “You wouldn’t.”

Casey admired the photo on his phone one last time and shrugged. “Eh, probably not. But, still, don’t piss me off, CIA.”

“What can I do,” Chuck said, lying back down on the bench again so that he could return to weight lifting, “that would make you delete that picture?”

Something slapped against his chest. Confused, Chuck set the bar down and picked up the folded piece of paper Casey had dumped on him. He unfolded it: a requisition form for an in-car missile launcher. 

“For the Crown Vic,” Casey said, nodding when Chuck gave him a boggled look. “Higher-ups turned down my request, but if you did it, they wouldn’t complain since you barely have any ammunition to your name anyway.”

“If I fill this out, and you get your in-car missile-launcher, that picture vanishes forever.”

“You press the delete key yourself.”

“And you don’t have any back-up copies anywhere?” 

Casey actually looked wounded. “You don’t think I’m a man of my word, Bartowski?”

Faced with that scowling mien, Chuck had no choice but to agree, hastily, that Casey was indeed a man most assuredly faithful to his word. In fact, he would fill out the form just as soon as he finished his work-out, and it would go off in the mail first thing on Monday morning.

“Good,” Casey said. “And then you can get to work on that hard drive. Higher-ups want you flashing again as your main priority, so if you don’t have it done by Monday, we’re following other leads and giving that to the boys in Washington.”

“Great,” Chuck said, scowling.

“What’s your problem now?”

“Nothing.” Only, Chuck thought as he settled in for his final round of reps, that if the government didn’t let him do his damned job, they had no room to complain in the future. He had yet to see the hard drive Bryce had fried when the other man had sent him the Intersect, and the government seemed to prefer him as just some humanized computer, staring at lists and pictures all day and flashing. It was like they didn’t even have the most basic computer systems to filter all of his data sometimes. He set the bar down for the final time and sat up, scowling. “I’ll get the drive hacked.”

“Okay.”

“I will,” Chuck insisted.

Casey shrugged. “If you don’t, the boys in Washington will. Whatever.”

Like hell they would, Chuck thought as Casey, having finished his workout, left the dojo. “Gee, thanks for the support, Casey,” Chuck grumbled after he’d left. He kicked off his shoes and moved to the center of the mat, hoping a long round of Tai Chi would help his suddenly vicious mood.

It didn’t.

**24 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**09:52 PST**

It pained him to take time away from the drive after making the explicit promise to Casey that he would hack it, but Chuck just couldn’t forget the Jill problem. He was insane—he had to be, normal ex-boyfriends didn’t do this sort of thing—but he still sat at his computer, making minor coding tweaks to the program he’d designed to create a mirror copy of Sergei Ezersky’s hard drive. The new version would be set up to mine data from a SIM card. Run in conjunction with the jammer, the computer would grab all of the data without alerting anybody who might be searching for the cell phone and afterward, Chuck would let one of his bot programs take a whack at the SIM card encryption while he worked on the hard drive on another account.

He just had to finish the coding first. And it was killing him by inches at the same time as it was driving him forward.

He slouched while he worked, a bad habit that even years of Ellie hadn’t been able to break. He could feel tension clinging through his neck and shoulders, pulling at his spine, but he ignored it, lost in the world of code. He barely registered the sounds of Nazis getting fragged from downstairs. It was accepted fact by now that he had created a monster when he had introduced Casey to _Call of Duty 3_. Casey probably wouldn’t take to _Modern Warfare_ quite as quickly (although Chuck had been wrong before), so he planned to wait on that one. A gamer wasn’t built in a day, after all.

By sheer coincidence, Chuck typed in the last line of code just as Casey let out a belly laugh and a, “Heh heh. Always knew the French would be able to grow a pair if I commanded them.” 

A few seconds later, cigar smoke wafted up to the loft. Chuck reached over without looking and turned on the fan he kept for this purpose. His eyes kept scanning for errors—he changed around two values, deleted an extraneous null—while his fingers tapped and his left leg jiggled.

It _looked_ right. Still, he ran a debugging program on it just to be sure, flinching when he spotted an obvious error. A couple of smaller errors were understandable and easy fixes for the most part, but he ran into a problem near the end of his code volley that took some creative thinking to get around.

Twenty minutes later, he took a deep breath, typed in an execute command, and pressed “Enter” before he could talk himself out of it.

Program complete.

Should he name it? Chuck frowned at the exe file, a random string of numbers and letters. He’d called the original Chuck-Hack, born out of the lack of originality he’d been feeling at the time. Maybe he should call the smaller version for cloning SIM cards Chack.

Okay, maybe that name needed a few tweaks. Or an entire overhaul, Chuck thought as he typed “Chuck Hack 2” into the name slot. He set it up to run and hooked his cell phone up to the computer. One deep breath later, he ran the program. If it worked, he would know soon.

Since he didn’t want to start on the drive until he knew that the program could mirror the SIM card, encryption and all, he pulled up the Internet. Soon, he would know for sure if Jill was involved in something shady. The thought made him laugh as he visited Facebook and typed in Jill’s name, scouting through the pages of Jills until he found her. He didn’t have a Facebook account—he could only imagine just how wide Graham’s eyes would bulge if the Intersect had its own Facebook page—but Jill did, and she didn’t have much security enabled. Chuck frowned at that thought as he scrolled through Jill’s friends, searching for Mr. Missing Cell Phone.

He probably should have done this before, he reflected, he’d spent an entire day building a cell phone/GPS jammer.

Though he scowled when he saw Jill’s old roommate Sherri (and a side-trip through her page informed him that, much to his disappointment, she had not developed a weight problem, a hunchback, or even a particularly hairy mole), nothing interesting popped up on the search through her friends. None of Jill’s friends matched the stranger Chuck had deprived of a cell phone.

The mystery continued. If Jill _did_ know her intruder, she didn’t know him well enough to be Facebook friends. That was decidedly odd.

Unless Mr. Matching Pocket Square simply didn’t have a Facebook account. Whoever he was, the dude needed to get with the times, Chuck thought, ignoring the fact that he himself had no account.

Chuck Hack 2 beeped to let him know that the transfer of data from his phone was complete. Chuck toggled Jill’s Facebook page onto the secondary monitor he’d decided he couldn’t live without, and pulled up the hacking program. 

Success, he thought for the second time, as all of his data from the SIM card, still encrypted, scrolled down the screen. He batted aside an absent thought that perhaps he should probably use his powers for good instead of evil, considering that he’d just cloned a government-issued CIA cell phone in—he checked the time—three minutes and twelve seconds.

“Go time,” he mumbled to himself as downstairs, Casey snickered about the Frogs and Americans.

Chuck took off his watch and set that, with his cell phone, in the farthest corner of his room from his computer. Please, let it be far enough, he prayed, though he could probably explain any blip with the GPS on his watch as something having to do with working on his drive. The fewer times he had to lie today, though, the better.

He came back to the computer, hooked the phone up, prepped the program, activated the jammer. Yet another deep breath, and he connected the phone to its battery and turned the power on.

The sound of Nazi death continued on unabated. Casey hadn’t been alerted.

Well, that was a relief. With Chuck Hack 2 happily chewing on the stranger’s cell phone, Chuck leaned forward to focus on the Ezersky drive. There was no way he was letting some hotshot office geeks in Washington out-nerd him on this one.

**24 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**12:11 PST**

So maybe the boys in Washington would need to out-nerd him after all.

Chuck pushed back from the desk and rubbed both hands over his face, pushing his fingertips into the hollows of his cheeks. The movement did nothing to stimulate any blood flow to his brain, give him new ideas, or, and he had hoped for this the most, erase the error message currently wreaking havoc across his primary monitor. Every item on his list of ideas to try was scratched out, the pencil lines through the words growing darker with frustration with every passing line. And since his last idea, a real Hail Mary anyway, hadn’t panned out, maybe he just had to face the inevitable: the data was probably corrupted.

Chack 1.0 hadn’t been as effective as he’d hoped.

Sergei Ezersky had, as they said, pwned him.

Definitely time for a Red Bull.

He pushed off of his chair, intending to go downstairs and grab one or two Red Bulls from the fridge. Instead, he changed direction mid-course and flopped face-first onto the bed. He laid there, one arm and one foot dangling off, and felt like beating his head against the wall a few times.

A moment or two later, he heard the game downstairs pause, the front door creak open, and quiet voices. And then came the footsteps on the stairs. “Chuck? Are you decent?”

“Unfortunately,” he mumbled without lifting his head from the mattress. It came out as something more like a noise a zombie would make than an actual word.

“I’m going to take that as a yes.” Sarah’s voice sounded amused as she climbed the rest of the stairs. “How ya doin’, Chuck?”

“Mmrgh,” Chuck said into the mattress. He felt it dip as Sarah sat down on the bed, then a smaller rustle as she set something beside her. Two somethings, he corrected. He turned his head to look up at her. “I’m…blah. How are you?”

“I seem to be doing better than you.” Sarah rattled a brown paper bag, one of two that she’d brought. “Turkey sandwich.”

“Thanksgiving turkey?”

Sarah continued swinging the bag. “And all the sides, including mashed potatoes.”

Chuck began to salivate.

“With gravy.”

Since he didn’t want to drool on the mattress—or in front of Sarah ever, really—Chuck sat up and turned, pulling one leg up so that his foot rested on his opposite knee. He took the bag from Sarah without snatching it, barely. “In fear of sounding too much like Morgan, I won’t call you ‘goddess,’ but you should know I’ll be thinking it.”

“Okay.” Sarah smiled and Chuck, his hand halfway into the bag, flashed back to the security console outside Sergei Ezersky’s house nearly a week before. Back when Sarah had climbed in on top of him, their bodies close for that brief, titillating second. He felt his core temperature beginning to warm at the thought and shook his head. Again, he was tempted to broach the subject, but if Sarah wasn’t going to bring it up, maybe he should just let it lie, or just forget it. There was more than a chance that Sarah herself had forgotten it, as Chuck’s own memories from their trip into the Ezersky estate were blurry and patchy.

Sarah ducked her head to meet his eyes, drawing his attention back. Belatedly, Chuck yanked his gaze back up. Had he been staring at her lips? Oh, geez. 

Indeed, Sarah gave him a strange look. “You okay?”

“Yeah. What, me? Psh.” Chuck forced a laugh, and had to hope that the noise didn’t sound as nervous as it did in his head. He cleared his throat, which dropped his voice down an octave, thankfully. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, brain wandered. It does that when I’m stuck.”

“Stuck?” Sarah pulled the second bag she’d brought with her into her lap and began unloading foodstuffs, all packed neatly in Ellie’s Tupperware. Before long, she’d created a picnic, right there on his bedspread. “You’re not using the weekend to play video games and veg out? Why not?”

Chuck shook his head, his mouth full of glorious turkey sandwich. “They’re sending the drive to DC on Monday and my orders will change back to the Flashing Human Computer.” He put on an electronic robot voice. “It sings! It dances! It flashes and bad guys fall down!”

Sarah laughed. “You’re a lot more than that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“And we’ve got all those other leads to follow. Uncovering government conspiracies isn’t done in a day.”

“It’s a matter of pride,” Chuck said.

“Oh?”

“Hacking that drive was my job. I should be able to do my job.” Chuck frowned, and jumped when a bit of turkey smacked into his nose. “Hey!”

“Quit that,” Sarah told him, crossing her arms over her chest and giving him a stern look. “No getting down on yourself. You got the drive cloned, you hacked the security, and you held your own against the thing we’ve agreed to never talk about again.”

“We have, have we?” It shouldn’t have made him smile, Sarah’s obvious discomfort with the miniature robot rabbits they’d faced down in the vault, but he grinned. She readied another piece of turkey to throw at him in warning. “Fine, fine, it is now known as the Event That Shall Not Be Named. Though I have to ask: why do they freak you out so much?”

Sarah took a big bite of her own turkey sandwich and took her time chewing. “Small faces,” she said, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with the inside of her wrist. “They’re creepy.”

“Uh-huh.” Chuck helped himself to the mashed potatoes. Since it was Ellie’s recipe, they were good enough to eat cold. “That’s a little strange. Bad-ass CIA agent, freaked out by—”

“A little perturbed,” Sarah said, giving him _the_ look.

“Fine, a little perturbed by small faces.” Chuck shook his head. “Just doesn’t seem to fit.”

“Yes, well, we’re not cookie-cutter agents, Chuck.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. And before I can dig myself even farther into this hole, I’m going to change the subject.” Chuck cast around for something to talk about, but came up blank. It was probably a sign of exhaustion, as he had never run out of conversational topics before unless faced with longer than twenty minutes of a glowering John Casey.

Sarah, as always, came to the rescue. “Do you want to talk about what you’re stuck on?” she asked, watching him over her turkey sandwich.

Chuck gave her a puzzled look. “You know something about hacking?”

“No, but I’m a fantastic listener.” Sarah moved a shoulder. “And it’s not like I understand half of your…”

“Technobabble?” Chuck suggested.

“Yes, that. I don’t understand half of it anyway, but I can help. I think.”

Chuck scooped out a bite of stuffing as he considered the offer. Talking it out might help. Sure, Sarah didn’t have the knowledge to function as a technical sounding board, but in the absence of another hacker…

“Well, it’s like this,” he said. “I think the data may have gotten corrupted, and if it’s corrupted, there’s very little I can do without having some sort of key to reference it against.”

“Did you check the logs?”

“Logs?”

“The logs Casey attached to the mission reports? To see if anything did happen during the transfer?”

For an absolutely blank second, Chuck did nothing but stare. Then he let out an explosion of breath and crumpled forward until his forehead rested against the mattress. “Oh, my God! I’m an idiot! Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”

Something ruffled the back of his hair, which was a little longer now that the buzz-cut had had a week to grow out. “See, sometimes you just need a different perspective,” Sarah said, and the amusement in her voice was almost hidden.

Chuck slowly pushed himself back until he was sitting up again. A new perspective. Was that a sign that he should tell Sarah he’d used her pickpocket lessons for evil rather than good? She’d be pissed, but if he explained to her that he was legitimately worried about Jill…

No. She would think he was being paranoid, and she would probably be justified because he was wondering the same himself. He knew that Sarah hadn’t liked the fact that he had been sitting outside Jill’s apartment on his nights off, and he really didn’t want to get into it with her now, not before he had something solid.

“You go check the logs,” Sarah said, drawing him back to the conversation. “I’ll clean up here.”

“You sure? I mean, technically, you cooked, I should at least clean up.” Chuck looked around the emptied Tupperware containers between them on the bedspread.

Sarah laughed and gave him a little shove toward the computer. “Go on.”

His grin faded when he saw that the stolen cell phone had been sitting out almost in plain view, only partially hidden by his page of notes on the Ezersky drive. Swearing a little under his breath, Chuck scooped both the phone and its battery into his pocket. He dropped into his chair and logged into Castle’s secure network right away, grateful that he’d left his computer on the public account. He would just work on hacking the cell phone after Sarah left. It shouldn’t take long.

He scrolled through the mission reports until he found Casey’s write-up of their break in at the Ezersky estate, known only as Location Echo in the reports.

“Wow,” he said a minute later. “Casey even writes like a military officer.”

“Watch it, Bartowski!” Casey called from downstairs.

“Did I say it was a bad thing?” Chuck called back.

He took Casey’s grumble for grudging assent. The sound of Nazis dying resumed. Chuck went back to reading. A couple of minutes later, he felt more than heard Sarah come up beside him. “What’s this?” she asked, picking up something from his desk.

“GPS slash cell phone jammer,” Chuck said without looking away from the computer screen. “Built it yesterday.”

“This is what you were working on last night? Why were you so hesitant to show it to me?”

Chuck’s fingers paused on the keyboard. “I wasn’t sure if it would work,” he said at length.

Out of the corner of his eye, Chuck watched Sarah turn the device over and frown at it. It was about the size of her palm and pretty hefty, but the exposed wiring made it seem fragile cupped in her fingers. “Why did you build it at all? Castle has built-in cell phone interceptors already.”

“I know. It was mostly curiosity, plus this one’s portable.”

“Oh. Hmm.”

“Still needs a few tweaks, though.” Chuck clicked to the next page.

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ll make one for you when I’ve perfected the design,” Chuck went on, eyes never leaving the screen. He raised his voice. “And one for you, too, Casey!”

“Uh-huh,” Casey said, echoing Sarah. Both spies upstairs heard something rather loud explode on the television, and the following snicker.

“Should probably modify it to run off of a car battery, too,” Chuck said, mostly under his breath. “I’ll have to switch up the output and the current to do so, but I can change that when—oh, interesting.”

“Hmm?” Sarah asked, sounding distracted.

Chuck leaned forward, just to make sure that he was reading the report correctly. “According to these activity logs, we got the data finalized the other night, but the transmission was only at ninety-nine percent at the time, so it’s possible that—what? What is it?”

Immediately, the scowl that had startled Chuck vanished as Sarah tore her gaze away from something over his shoulder. “What? Sorry, I was listening, I promise. Go on.”

Chuck squinted at her, but decided to let it drop. “Uh, right. It’s possible that the…missing portion here is the thing that’s screwing everything up because it’s part of the encryption on the drive. But I mean, the chances of it…I mean, it’s one in, like, a bajillion.” Chuck frowned and scratched the back of his head.

He didn’t expect Sarah’s quiet chuckle, so he glanced over. She got up from the bed and walked toward him. “You’re telling me, the guy that got into a car accident with the Chinese mafia and then got kidnapped by proxy within two days of returning to Los Angeles is put off by the odds?” She smirked as she sat on the edge of his desk and looked down at him.

“You’re right,” Chuck said, feeling a mirroring smirk answer hers. “Never tell me the odds.”

“Okay. I won’t. But, maybe, do you think if there _is_ a gap there, it can be filled?”

“Hm. I’m not sure. There’s a lot of sectors that would have to be rebuilt even if one percent doesn’t seem like a lot. That’s assuming that yes, it’s part of the encryption that we missed, but I _could_ theoretically use a randomizer that would, given enough specs, I think, build that missing fragment. Heh. I used something similar on Sheik Al’abadazeera’s computer system last year when you and Bryce were in Oman.”

“Did you?” Sarah sounded amused now.

“Yeah. Unfortunately, the original code I used went the way of the Intersect Virus—thanks for that, Bryce—but…” Chuck went to pick up his cell phone from the spot it always occupied on his desk, but his hand met nothing but air.

Oh, right, he thought. “’Scuse me a sec,” he said, popping up from the desk chair fast enough for Sarah to brace against the desk. He side-stepped around her and crossed to the corner where his cell phone and watch lay.

Sarah raised an eyebrow.

“I tested the GPS device and I didn’t want you or Casey freaking out. That’s why the watch isn’t on my wrist.”

“Why didn’t you just call me and let me know?”

She had a point. “Ah, it was three in the morning,” he said, since it wasn’t technically a lie. He _had_ tested the jammer at three a.m., but that had been at Castle. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Next time, keep the watch on and wake me,” Sarah said, folding her arms over her chest.

“Me too!” Casey called.

“Yeah, yeah, yeesh.” Chuck rolled his eyes skyward and hit a button on his phone. Sarah didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. She sat on the edge of his bed, her arms folded over her chest as she watched him make the call. He ignored her and plopped into his desk chair as the other end of the line picked up. “Dave! Hey! Good news! You get to hear my voice on a Saturday.”

“Nothing much unusual about that,” Digital Dave grumbled from the other end of the phone line. “What can I do you for, Chuck?”

Five minutes later, Chuck hung up the phone and began to type furiously. “And that, my friend, is the wonder of dedicated tech support. He’s sending over a copy of the code I need for that program, and he had a couple of helpful suggestions, which I will of course either follow or add my own tweaks to,” he told Sarah without looking over his shoulder as he wrote. He wanted to get down all of Dave’s ideas before he forgot any, but when there was no answer from the bed, his fingers slowed. He glanced over to make sure she hadn’t left. The fact that she could move so silently made this a constant worry for him.

She was still on the bed, though she’d moved so that she was lying across it on her stomach, her feet up in the air and her chin propped up on her fists. The pose in no way matched the vicious scowl on her face.

“Uh, Sarah?” Chuck asked, waving his hand.

She jolted, as much as it was possible for Sarah Walker to jolt. Her entire body jerked just the slightest bit, her head snapped back, her eyes cut to him and to the floor in quick succession.

But not quickly enough, apparently, for Chuck turned his head. He blinked at his second monitor, which was still displaying Jill’s Facebook page. Why on earth would Sarah be glaring at that? She hadn’t seemed to dislike or like Jill especially at Stanford, and there was really no reason for such animosity…unless…no. It wasn’t jealousy. That simply wasn’t an option.

Slowly, he swiveled his desk chair around so that he was facing Sarah. “Uh, what’s on your mind?” For her to be glaring so maliciously, it must have been a very bad thought or something to do with Casey.

She raised her eyes to meet his, and for once, they were completely unreadable. “Nothing,” she told him, giving a cute little shrug. She tossed her hair a little bit.

He narrowed his eyes. He didn’t believe that for a second. She hadn’t even looked at Mei-Ling Cho with so much hate, and Mei-Ling had held him at gunpoint. “Really?”

Sarah’s smile was of the impish variety, but he still caught undercurrents of discomfort and a desire to change the subject. She had also, Chuck saw, gone absolutely still, something she only did when she felt threatened. Well, okay, he amended, threatened with actual danger. Awkward social situations tended to make her squirm rather than still, but she was generally active and kinetic until Mission Mode Sarah took over. Then the federal agent gained control.

Chuck wondered why he was seeing the federal agent now.

“Had something on my mind,” Sarah said, bouncing her shoulders a little. Chuck gave her the “go on” look, and she sighed. “Something bad.”

“Must have been. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Don’t you have a hard drive to crack?”

“Oh, right,” Chuck said, remembering Sergei Ezersky’s hard drive. He started to swivel his chair back around, but stopped mid-motion and turned back. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I had a nightmare a few days ago,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes. “And I was just thinking about it. That’s all.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, Chuck, I’m sure.” Aggravation hinted at the edges of Sarah’s voice. It was time, Chuck saw, to drop the subject. 

So he gave her the genial grin that usually worked to win people over. “Must have been quite the nightmare to scare big, bad Sarah Walker.”

Sarah glowered at him. “Small faces,” was all she said.

Chuck raised his hands in surrender. “Wow, okay, sorry. I didn’t realize they scared you that much.”

“Perturbed.”

“Right. Perturbed. I’ll, uh, just get back to work.” Chuck hunched over the keyboard and began to type. After a few seconds, he heard Sarah sigh and get up off of the bed. He didn’t flinch when she laid a hand on his shoulder, though his fingers slowed on the keyboard. Her hand was really warm.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a second.

He waved a hand, but didn’t look up at her. He wasn’t sure why not. The pieces of the stolen cell phone weighed heavily in his pocket. “There’s no need to apologize. It was a sore spot, and my bad for treading on it. So really, I’m the one that should be apologizing.”

“And you don’t need to apologize, either.”

“So we’re good?”

Sarah didn’t answer for a moment. “Yeah,” she finally said. “Yeah, we’re good.” She reached out and hit a button on Chuck’s computer. 

Before Chuck could squawk out a protest, Jill’s Facebook page vanished. Maybe he should check his security again, if Sarah was so familiar with his computer. It might be time to retire Schnookie for a little while.

“It’s really not polite to spy on people,” Sarah said.

“Oh. Right.” Chuck cleared his throat, his hand creeping into his pocket and clinking the cell phone pieces together. He had to go by Jill’s building and drop that off soon. Maybe in the bushes outside. But now, he gave Sarah his best apologetic smile. “Sorry, I just…”

“I know.” Sarah put her hand in her pocket as well. “I’d better get going. But first, Chuck…is something on your mind?”

“No,” Chuck lied, deliberately forcing himself not to think about the stolen cell phone or the encrypted SIM card.

“Okay.” Sarah vanished down the stairs.

After she left, Chuck stared in confusion at his secondary monitor. Even though it was now blank, the intensity of Sarah’s glare remained. Maybe it had just been the resting place of her eyes while she thought about her nightmare, but the glare had seemed…awfully pointed.

He didn’t have time to think about it, though. He had a hard drive to crack, and he had an encryption to break. Oh, right, and a cell phone to return to the scene of the crime, which he should probably get on soon. Chuck set his watch to give himself an hour with which to focus on the hard drive, then he would take the cell phone back. He would work on the encryption tonight, after he put in a few hours on the drive.

With that settled, he got to work with the program Digital Dave had sent him.

**24 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**14:05 PST**

Before his watch could beep, something on his computer began shrilling, startling him out of his digital trance. He blinked heavily a few times and shook his head to clear the lines of code from it. What on earth? 

Downstairs, the sounds of World War II had ceased. Casey had either gone for a run or he was at Castle, cleaning a random piece of equipment no doubt meant to kill, maim, or at the very least drop a grown man at a full run. Chuck had to appreciate that about Casey: whatever else he could say about the man, he always stuck to his guns.

Chuck’s eyebrows scrunched together as he scrolled through his computer until he located the source of the beep. He’d placed a tracking satellite that he knew Dave wasn’t using this weekend on Jill’s cell phone, and had set the program to alert him just in case she decided to head back to the L.A. area early.

She was definitely on her way back from Sacramento.

That was odd. Chuck saved his progress on the Ezersky drive and switched over to his mirrored computer account. If Jill was on her way back, he needed to break that phone security. He figured she was probably safer in Sacramento, with her parents and extended family around, but she lived alone and Matching Pocket Square had keys to her apartment.

Who knew what kind of danger she was in? If she was in any danger, that is?

He set up a password scanner, let that run on one of the cloned copies of the cell phone while he attacked another copy manually. Why was Jill coming back early? She usually stayed at her parents’ until the very last minute. Chuck and Bryce had always teased her about it at Stanford since whenever they’d headed to Mexico for Spring Break, Jill had always gone home. She was close to her family, especially her dad. Close enough that Chuck had been so nervous about meeting Dr. Roberts, he had almost spilled a full decanter of wine in the other man’s lap.

The memory made Chuck frown and bring his attention back to the phone. He needed to get this done; he needed to know.

**24 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**20:24 PST**

“Damn it!” Real frustration laced through Chuck now as he stared at yet another error message. Where the hell had he gone wrong this time? What the hell was up with the tech products of the world? And why the hell was he just sucking at _everything_ he hacked this week? Was he going to have to turn in his nerd license? Were they going to revoke his membership to the Hacker’s Club of America? He hadn’t hit this many brick walls since he and Morgan had gone looking for girls willing to double-date for the junior prom.

The phone monitor beeped to let him know that Jill was about forty-five minutes out and stuck in traffic, but he still needed to move if he intended to ditch the phone at her building before she got back. 

Grumbling under his breath, he grabbed the laptop he’d borrowed from Castle and began the process of transferring his files and programs over. It looked like he was no longer working from home.

**24 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**21:17 PST**

Perhaps sitting in a car alongside a relatively busy street wasn’t the smartest place for an agoraphobic, but it hadn’t stopped him before, and there was no reason it should stop him now, Chuck thought. Except, he had to return a stolen cell phone to the scene of the crime, which meant that he would actually have to approach his ex-girlfriend’s apartment yet again. Inexplicably, he felt the letter he’d written what seemed like ages ago crinkle inside his jacket.

He could still give it to her, walk away from this mess, wash his hands of all of this. She’d ejected him from her life, and Jill was a big girl. If she was in trouble, she could call the police just as well as anybody else. 

But what if she wasn’t able to? What if Matching Pocket Square was threatening her? Her family? What if she didn’t know he was stealing things from her?

Chuck’s fingers closed briefly over the letter. He couldn’t say good-bye now.

He pulled on a pair of gloves and meticulously began to wipe the phone down. He didn’t plan to turn it on. The amount of encryption on the SIM card meant that the owner would be able to track the phone even when it was turned off, so Chuck planned to wait to put the battery back in.

He peered through the passenger side window, trying to figure out the best place to leave the cell phone. There was no call for rain over the next few days, which meant he could abandon the phone outside, out of sight, without feeling too guilty. Thankfully, the evening was cool, which meant if he kept his hands in his pockets, the gloves wouldn’t look too far out of place. He eyed the side of the building for security cameras, marked his trajectory, and climbed out of the car.

It was almost anticlimactic to leave the cell phone behind a trash can by the building’s front door and return to his car. Every step felt laden with danger, building in a crescendo that ended…with nothing. Chuck slipped back into the driver’s side of his car, and nothing happened. Nobody followed him. Nobody came rushing out of the apartment building to arrest him, there were no ninjas dropping off of skyscrapers to karate chop him into submission.

Hell, there wasn’t even a pedestrian walking by to give him an odd look.

Chuck fired up the laptop and sighed as he checked his phone, which was still hooked up to Dave’s satellite. Jill was about to get off of the Five and head over to her apartment. He’d already checked with Casey’s thermal binoculars; there was nobody in the apartment, at least. Creepy Stolen Cell Phone dude had yet to return.

There was nothing to do but wait and work.

Three hours later, when the little red light on his watch began to blink, signaling that he was being pinged, he paid it no mind. He was a grown man. If he wanted to stay in his car and work all night, he had every right to do so.

Still, he couldn’t help that a little sliver of guilt that sliced in just under his ribcage and sat uncomfortably against his chest all night.

**27 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CHUCK’S CAR**   
**06:42 PST**

He’d only meant to rest his eyes for a second. A minute, tops. Maybe five, if he really needed it. So when Chuck closed his eyes at 3:36 in the morning, and opened them over three hours later, he was a little surprised. But it wasn’t nearly as shocking as the fact that he wasn’t alone.

Sarah Walker sat in the passenger seat. More pointedly, Sarah Walker sat in the passenger seat, and she had her gun on her lap. He blinked sluggishly. Sarah slammed the magazine into the gun with a little too much force.

Oh, God, the irrational part of Chuck’s brain, the one hampered by lack of sleep and worry over Jill and about a thousand other things, thought. Sarah had gotten orders from the CIA to come kill him. This was where it ended. This was how it—

Wait a second. Sarah didn’t want to kill him. Not after all of the work she’d put into him.

“Morning, Chuck,” Sarah said without looking at him.

Okay, he should take that back. Maybe Sarah did want to kill him. He hadn’t heard quite that much…frost in her voice before. Not even during the Acropolis Cold-Clock.

“S-Sarah?” he asked, a yawn catching him off-guard. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

“What do you think, Chuck?” Sarah checked the chamber.

The click of the slide popping back into place startled him. Chuck jerked forward, his hands spasming on the keyboard. “You’re—you’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

Sarah gave him a “What the hell have you been smoking?” look and tucked her gun back into her waistband. “No,” she said.

Since she sounded almost regretful, Chuck eyed her. Other details seeped in: they were sitting in his car on Jill’s street, the sun was peeking over the edges of the horizon, there were two cups of steaming coffee in the cup holders, and Sarah looked well on her way to pissed.

“Had some time,” Sarah said, turning back to look out the window, “so I cleaned my gun.”

“Okay, Casey.” Chuck pushed the heels of his hands up against his eye sockets and yawned again. The laptop still in his lap slid a little; he grabbed it by reflex, but didn’t shut the lid. “What’re you doing here?”

“I think the more important question is, what are _you_ doing here, Chuck?”

It was fairly obvious. “I asked first,” Chuck said, surprised to hear petulance in his tone.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’m here because I’m your bodyguard, and you’re being an idiot and sleeping in an exposed car on the side of the street. And by exposed, I mean unlocked. And by that, I mean, what the hell are you thinking?”

Chuck scowled. Something about the word “bodyguard,” especially put in context with Sarah, just annoyed him. But even more, the feeling of being a chastised kid rankled deep. “I can do as I please, it’s my downtime,” he said.

“Not if it means putting yourself in danger.”

“What danger?” Chuck deliberately swept his eyes over the mostly-abandoned street.

Sarah glowered. “You left the car unlocked. And it’s not right, what you’re doing.” She paused; her scowl deepened, viciously, for the tiniest of split seconds. “You’re stalking this woman, Chuck.”

“I am not!”

He didn’t expect her to scoff. “I’m sorry, sitting in a car outside her apartment all night, that’s kind of the definition of stalking!”

Not if she’s in danger, Chuck thought, but he just glared. “It’s not stalking,” he said stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Oh, so you think it’s _healthy_ , what you’re doing?”

To buy himself a second, Chuck grabbed the nearest coffee out of the cup holder and popped open the lid. Sarah had already put sweetener and cream in it. He took a long sip. “Probably not,” he said at length. “But I can’t…”

“Can’t what?” 

“I think she’s in danger!” Chuck blurted out, and set the coffee down before he bobbled it all over himself. He took a deep breath and forced himself to look at Sarah, though he wanted to just keep glaring at his computer screen or at the steering wheel. It was hard to meet her eyes right now, for some reason. 

The thought made his spine stiffen. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He was an operative for the United States government. If he thought something was wrong, he had every right to investigate it. He should not be ashamed to look at his partner. So he added defiance to his glare. “When I was delivering the letter, on Thanksgiving, I was going to slide it under her door, but this guy came out of the apartment.”

“So?” Sarah asked.

“So, there was something weird about him, and I think Jill might be in trouble.”

“Did you flash on him?” Sarah asked, Mission Mode Sarah sliding into place.

Now Chuck did look away. “No,” he said.

“Did he have a gun?”

“No.”

“Then why did you think there was something off about him?” Sarah’s eyes narrowed, but Chuck didn’t look away from the steering wheel. “Unless…”

The laptop beeped. 

“You’re jealous!” Sarah breathed, gaping at him. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Jill’s got a new boyfriend, and you’re jealous!”

“What?” Chuck glanced briefly away from the laptop to give her a strange look. “I’m not jealous.”

“Seriously? And what makes you think this guy is dangerous, again?”

“Because I stole his cell phone and he’s got some crazy security on it, and he was using a key to get into her apartment, and I think he was stealing her research.” Chuck tapped a few commands into his laptop, his brows drawing together. He must have hit a search command when Sarah had startled him awake, though what his computer was searching for, he had no idea.

“Wait, go back a second. You stole his cell phone?” Sarah’s eyes went wide. “How?”

“Oh, I pickpocketed him.” Chuck tapped a command to see what he had accidentally started searching for: a random line of code from the Ezersky drive. Well, that was useless. He moved to stop the search.

Only to yelp when Sarah grabbed his shoulder and yanked him back to face her. “You did _what_?” she asked. “Chuck, when I gave you that lesson, it was only to—”

“Only to what?” Chuck asked when she stopped in the middle of her sentence. He held his hands up in a surrender position. “And I must say, I’m very uncomfortable with you using violence on me right now, given that I just saw you tuck your gun away.”

Sarah glared at him and reached back with her free hand to yank the gun out. But instead of pointing it at him, as he half-feared she might, she tossed it on the back seat. “There. Satisfied?”

“I really shouldn’t be, since I know you’ve got at least twelve to fifteen knives on your person, but yes. Yes, I am.”

“Chuck, you weren’t supposed to actually use the pickpocket lesson! What if you’d gotten caught and the guy had pressed charges?”

“Well, it’s a moot point because I didn’t get caught, which you should take as a compliment to your teaching skills.” Rolling his eyes, Chuck turned back to the computer, and frowned.

The search had found one result.

That was odd. Especially since the result wasn’t located in the Ezersky drive at all. In fact, it came from a completely different quadrant altogether.

What the hell?

“Are you even listening to me?” Sarah’s voice, incensed now, cut in through his concentration. It sounded, he realized with a wince, like it hadn’t been the first time she’d asked the question.

Still, he tried to hide the guilt. “Uh…yes?”

“Oh yeah? Then what did I just say, Chuck?”

“I…” He searched his brain, but apparently, his ears hadn’t been saving any data. He gave her a helpless look.

She made a noise that was somewhere between a disgusted groan and a sigh, and flopped back against the seat, her arms crossed. “Figures.”

“It’s not that I wasn’t listening, it’s just that—well, there’s something strange going on.” Chuck abruptly turned his attention back to his laptop, ignoring Sarah’s frustrated noise, and began typing. “The phone I lifted from the guy, Mr. Matching Pocket Square, it was pretty heavily encrypted, and I just accidentally did a search—which was your fault, by the way—”

“Yay me,” Sarah said with absolutely no enthusiasm whatsoever. “Put the computer away. I’m taking you back to Castle.”

“No, seriously, I think there’s a problem here. The search found—”

“I don’t care, Chuck. You can’t keep stalking this woman!”

“I’m not stalking her! I’m protecting her!” Chuck looked away from the screen to give her a ferocious look. He hadn’t meant to shout—he just wasn’t the shouting type—but it hadn’t even fazed Sarah in the slightest. She was glaring right back at him, her chin up and her eyes clearly spoiling for a fight. He squinted at her once and turned his attention back to his computer. “Will you give me _two seconds_ to explain myself, please? God!”

“Two seconds, and if I don’t like the explanation, I’m going to—”

“What? Knock me out and dump me in the back of an ambulance with your ex-boyfriend? Oh, wait, you’ve already done that!” Chuck’s fingers flew across the keyboard as his eyes followed the cursor on the screen, trying to locate the source of the matching code on his laptop. “Listen, the guy whose cell phone I lifted—and don’t even start with me, this is still my time—he had some pretty heavy encryption on it. Like government agency heavy.”

“So?”

“So what’s Jill doing with all of that? She’s a biomedical engineering grad student.” Chuck frowned as the monitor flashed the results at him. That couldn’t possibly be right. 

“So?” Sarah asked again.

“So it’s a little weird that a guy with this much security on just a simple cell phone is going into her apartment and taking her binders.” Chuck blinked at the words “MATCH FOUND” that kept insistently popping up on the screen.

There was an encryption code match between Sergei Ezersky, Russian Toy Robot Nightmare Maker Extraordinaire, and Mr. Matching Pocket Square.

How the hell?

Unless…

“It could just be a coincidence,” Sarah said, but now she sounded dubious. “I mean, maybe he’s her professor or something. The government hires professors all the time for research, especially in that field.” She sighed. “Fine. Do you still have the cell phone? I can call in and get the tech department to get a look at it.”

“Uh, I don’t think we’re gonna need that,” Chuck said, his voice distant in his ears as he stared at the laptop screen. “And besides, not that it matters, I abandoned the phone.”

“You did?” Now Sarah sounded annoyed. “Why?”

“Because it wasn’t mine? And I said it doesn’t matter.” Chuck took a deep breath and swallowed, hard. He slowly turned to face the passenger seat, fear making his heart thump erratically against his ribcage. “Sarah, what the hell does Fulcrum want with my ex-girlfriend?”

Sarah jumped. “Fulcrum?” she demanded.

Chuck swiveled the laptop screen so that she could see it, the windows containing the code for the stolen cell phone and the stolen hard drive data side by side. “MATCH FOUND” blinked in bright red over both. “I think Beckman was right. I think Sergei Ezersky was Fulcrum, and I think whoever was taking Jill’s stuff, I think he is, too.”

“Holy shit,” Sarah breathed, staring at the screen.

Panic made it hard to breathe. “So what do we do?” he asked, his breathing speeding up. “If Fulcrum’s stealing stuff from Jill—Bryce said they’re bad. They’re very, very bad. Sarah, I can’t let her—”

“I know, Chuck.” Sarah pushed her hands through her hair, evidently composing and scrapping plans in her head. She looked at Chuck. “It’s going to be okay. Don’t freak out on me right now.”

“Right.” Chuck forced his breathing to slow, though his heart was still galloping. “Right.”

“It’s going to be fine. I’m going to go get Jill, I’ll get her down here, and we’ll go to a safe-house. Nice and easy, right?”

“Right,” Chuck said for the third time.

“I want you to wait in the car, and have it all ready to go, all right?” Sarah grabbed his arm to ensure that all of his attention stayed on her and not on the words on the computer screen. “You can do that for me, right?”

He bobbled his head, but as he did so, his eyes cut to something outside the car. “Uh, Sarah—”

“Chuck, I need you to stay focused. You can freak out later.”

“It’s not that,” Chuck said, and his heart stopped beating altogether. “I just, uh, think we have more pressing concerns at the moment.” He lifted one shaky finger and pointed out the passenger side window, over Sarah’s shoulder, out into the daylight.

Right at the barrel of the gun that Mr. Matching Pocket Square held.

“Oh,” Sarah said.


	31. In Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When it is darkest, men see the stars. — _Ralph Waldo Emerson_

**27 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CAR TRUNK**   
**07:38 PST**

Sarah Walker had many modes. There was Mission Mode Sarah, which wasn’t as fun as the others but could be both badass and professional at the same time. Valley Girl Sarah, perfect for freaking out Chuck’s ex-girlfriends (well, okay, Chuck amended, the one ex-girlfriend). Coworker Sarah, always willing to help out and pick up the bureaucratic pieces. Friend Sarah, forever willing simply to lend an ear.

Now he discovered his least favorite Sarah of all: Trapped in the Car Trunk Sarah.

The lid had slammed down on them maybe twenty minutes before. Chuck didn’t know exactly how long, mostly because he didn’t have his watch. Fulcrum had taken that, not that it mattered. It would have been impossible to see said watch with his hands bound behind his back anyway, but he hadn’t thought to start counting for what he estimated to be about five minutes after the trunk lid had shut. And fifteen minutes had passed since that point.

One thing about Trapped in the Car Trunk Sarah was that she squirmed. A lot.

“What are you _doing_?” Chuck hissed at her. He couldn’t see her since they’d stuffed her in first, putting her nearer to the passengers and him nearer to the back, but he could feel almost every inch of her writhing against his back, and it was starting to freak him out. “Why do you keep moving so much?”

“Shut up,” she hissed right back.

Trapped in the Car Trunk Sarah was also kind of testy.

“Fine,” Chuck said, biting off his words. “Shutting up. Geez. Though quit moving, will you? You’re freaking me out.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Sarah said pretty loudly, considering that his ear was about three inches from her lips.

Chuck frowned and used whatever leverage he could get from the back of the car to turn himself over. It pinioned his hands somewhat uncomfortably between his back and the back wall, but he didn’t care. He glared. “What’s your problem?”

“What do you think my problem is, Chuck?” She kept her eyes dead center on his even though she kept squirming, only now it was up against him.

Maybe turning over had been a bad idea.

“You’re always getting into trouble and poking your nose into things you shouldn’t,” Sarah went on, and the words hit Chuck like a punch to the gut. They were also still too loud. Before Chuck could reply, Sarah dipped her head forward, almost bonking him in the nose with her forehead. “ _Sell_ it,” she whispered under her breath, and jerked her head toward the main body of the car, where their captors were riding along, accompanying them to their deaths.

Her shampoo smelled really good.

The trunk was a little too warm.

He was probably going to get motion sickness from riding without windows.

His ex-girlfriend was being used by Fulcrum.

Chuck didn’t want to sell a damned thing. He wanted out of the stuffy trunk, he wanted Jill safe, but mostly, he wanted to curl up in the fetal position and rock back and forth for a few hours until normalcy reinserted itself into his world.

But Sarah’s eyes promised grim things if he didn’t go along with her.

“I _wasn’t_ poking my nose where it didn’t belong,” he said. “As clearly, I was right about something.”

“And you were going to tell me when?”

“When I had more information!” Chuck’s eyes cut around the trunk. He couldn’t see any way to escape, but apparently Sarah could. Either that or she was just naturally squirmy while stuck in the car trunk. “Which I do now!”

“Oh, good. Now that we’ve both been abducted?” Sarah rolled her eyes and squirmed harder, her shoulder popping up and knocking him solidly in the sternum. He felt a stab of annoyance. “Good work on that one, Chuck!”

“Hey!” Real aggravation laced his tone. “Back off a little, will you?” In an undertone, he added, “And quit moving around so much!”

“I’m trying to get my shoe off,” she said through gritted teeth. In a louder voice, she continued, “No, I will _not_ back off, not when you’re about to get us both killed. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking maybe I had a friend in danger!” Desperately, since she had yet to stop writhing against him and he could feel blood heading southward, he hissed, “Please? Please quit moving around so much?”

“Why?”

Chuck gritted his teeth and tried to think of his ugly, fat nemesis from the third grade. “Because!”

Sarah gave him a confused look for approximately five seconds before the implication struck her. “ _Oh_. Right. Um.” She immediately went still, her eyes wide. She looked almost panicked. “You know what, you turn over, I’ll turn over, and you can grab my right shoe.”

“What?”

“I need my knife.”

“You have a knife in your—of course you have a knife in your shoe. You’re Sarah Walker.” Chuck, crisis averted, managed to roll over again, though he banged his nose rather painfully against the back of the trunk. His swear this time was at least real.

It was a study in physics and kinetics to get Sarah’s shoe off of her foot with bound hands, but through teamwork, arguing inanely the whole time, they managed. Perhaps Sarah thought Chuck’s falsified arguments were getting absurd, for she let out a huffing noise about two minutes after they’d gotten her shoe off and declared loudly that she was never speaking to him ever again.

Chuck replied hotly that that was fine by him.

Silent now, Sarah cut his hands free, keeping the rope mostly intact. He could still feel her moving behind him, but it didn’t seem quite as frantic as it had earlier. And she didn’t whisper anything at him, though occasionally he felt her shoulder nudge his shoulder blade, or her knee fit in along the back of his. The movements were probably accidental, though they were comforting just the same.

He wasn’t alone in the darkness.

There were two of them now.

Two of them, he thought, using up all the oxygen, while outside, Jill was in danger. Had they killed her? Had they stuffed her into a trunk, too? Or was she unaware, going about her everyday life, with this constant threat hanging over her head?

Oh, God.

“Chuck?” Sarah whispered, probably hearing the catch in his breath. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Chuck swallowed hard. This wasn’t the bunker. For one thing, it was far too hot, and he had Sarah behind him, weight and warmth pressed fully against him. “Trying not to think about suffocation.”

“Suffo—Chuck, you don’t have to worry about that. Car trunks aren’t airtight.” Something pushed briefly against the exposed skin on the back of his neck: Sarah’s forehead. She’d head-butted him. “And I’ve got my knife now, and my hands are loose. If it’s too much of a problem, we’ll get the trunk open and fight our way out.”

“Fight our way out?” Those were not very comforting words, especially since he had yet to convince Casey or Sarah of the value of martial arts lessons. Casey’s response had been, “Why? So you can punch yourself in the face? Pass.”

It was a valid point, but the lack of self defense training, outside of what he’d learned in the Army, was not really helping now.

“Trust me, Chuck,” Sarah said. “They’re taking us out into the desert to shoot us, which means—”

“You’re really not doing well at this comforting thing!”

“Shh! Which means,” Sarah went on, “that we still have a chance, okay? If they’d have been really smart, they would have shot us already.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s _also_ real helpful.”

“We still have a chance,” Sarah repeated. “So keep your cool.”

It was hard to do that when he could feel the temperature in the trunk creeping up, slowly, torturously. He already regretted having worn jeans and long sleeves. The musty air didn’t cycle, letting him breathe in his own scent, mingled with Sarah’s. The air felt hot and lay heavily against the back of his throat, which meant every breath only made him thirstier. His world was absolutely confined to what he could see around him—black walls, three inches in front of his face, over his head, pushed up against his knees and shins and toes, and Sarah.

He took a deep breath, forced it out, tried not to think about it.

With his eyes closed, he discovered that it was almost calming. He couldn’t see, so the lack of space didn’t bother him, and it felt almost like being in a cocoon. He could feel the road rumbling through the arm and shoulder that were pinned by his weight, jouncing both him and Sarah every couple of seconds or so. The fact that it was relatively smooth told him they were on some major highway. He let it soothe him as best he could, trying not to think about a multitude of things: Jill, his own fear, Sarah’s words, Casey’s anger when he found out what had happened to his partners, getting shot by Mr. Matching Pocket Square, who scarily hadn’t said a word as he’d had both Chuck and Sarah bound by Fulcrum agents. Chuck had flashed on a few—they all definitely worked for the government, but none of them seemed benevolent—but he hadn’t wanted to reveal that information in front of them. And he had no idea how it would work to his advantage now.

It was probably an accident that he even heard Sarah’s breath hiccup.

“You okay?” he asked lowly.

“I’m fine.”

“Okay.” He let the silence fall again.

Sarah eventually sighed. “I don’t like small spaces,” she said, and he had to strain to hear her.

“You’re claustrophobic?” Automatically, he moved closer to the back of the trunk—and nearly bashed his nose when the car hit a particularly large bump in the road. 

Sarah, however, only kneed him in the back of the thigh. “Don’t do that. You’re fine. And no, I’m not claustrophobic. Not precisely. I…don’t like small spaces. But I’m okay right now.”

“If you say so,” Chuck said, his voice dubious.

“I say so.”

“Want to play a game?”

“What?”

If I lay here and think, I’m going to keep thinking until I start panicking again, and then you’ll have to put aside your weird pho—not-phobias and deal with mine, and I don’t really want to feel like a burden today. So let’s play a game.”

“Um.” There was a long pause before Sarah answered. “What do you suggest?”

“Ever play Grandma’s Attic?”

**25 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**CAR TRUNK (NEAR DELANO, CALIFORNIA)**   
**10:21 PST**

“Dolphins, Captain Awesome’s cleverly creative codename, beeswax, and the atrophied Adam’s apple of Anthony Anderson,” Sarah finished, still whispering, though her voice was triumphant.

Chuck rolled his eyes. “I get it, I get it,” he said. “You have a damn near photographic memory. I should never have taught you about this game. I think I’ve created a monster.”

“It’s nice that there are games in this world I can actually win.”

“Oh, yeah, because you wouldn’t kick my ass at football, baseball, soccer, rugby, tennis, or anything physical.” 

Sarah pushed against his arm, a light touch since the temperature had risen to uncomfortable levels in the trunk. Chuck had retreated to the back of the trunk and Sarah to the front. An expanse of space existed between them, though he could make out the outlines of Sarah’s body, matte black against the dimness. “I meant smart people games, but don’t put yourself dow—do you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

“The car’s slowing down.”

When Chuck concentrated, he could feel it, though he wondered what kind of training normal CIA agents went through to be able to sense that sort of thing. The change was minute at best. Still, he rolled over so that his back was facing away from Sarah again, and let her loosely bind the ropes around his wrists. He imagined that she was sliding the knife in along her wrist, and hoped she didn’t cut herself.

Who was he kidding? She was Sarah Walker.

Nerves began to writhe and claw and bite as the car slowed down, jostling over rough terrain. The side of Chuck’s head slammed a bit painfully into the floor of the trunk, and he grunted. “What kind of road is this?” he grumbled at Sarah.

“Abandoned road, probably,” Sarah said.

“That’s real comforting.”

“Not a situation for much comforting, Chuck. You remember what we talked about?”

“I’ll follow your lead,” Chuck promised, as Sarah had drilled the plan into his head multiple times between games of Grandma’s Attic, Buzz, and one very limited game of “Eye Spy” (“I spy something blue.” “My eyes.” “Damn it!”). “You want to start, or should I?”

“I’m curious to see what you’ll come up with,” Sarah said. She was stretching out her limbs as best she could, even if it meant driving a knee into Chuck’s back, or an elbow against the nape of his neck. He didn’t mind so much, not if it could save both their lives. “You go ahead.”

Chuck took a deep breath, braced his knees against the bottom of the trunk, and let out a shrill warble of terror. “We’re slowing down, Sarah! Oh, my God, oh, my God. They’re going to kill us. This is it!”

“Crank it down a notch!” Sarah hissed.

But Chuck was already going full steam. “I’m too young to die!” he wailed, rocking back and forth. “I’m too young, and you’re too pretty, and it’s too soon!”

“Quit being such a baby!” Sarah said at regular volume. He could feel her shaking with suppressed laughter. It spoke a lot about their lives that either of them could find anything at all funny about this situation. Or maybe it was the hysteria talking.

Either way, he kept up the mostly-incoherent stream of babble, admonished often by Sarah, as the car slowly rolled to a stop, jouncing and bouncing and jostling them every foot of the way. Panic made him sweat harder. The driver turned the engine off. Chuck began to pray. Four car doors opened and slammed. Chuck prayed harder. He felt Sarah rub her whole body up against his back, just the once, even as she scolded him for being a coward.

He hoped it was an act because he genuinely felt like wetting his pants. It probably didn’t help that he’d had to pee for the last hour.

The light, when the trunk opened, seared his eyes so badly that he yelped. The world grew indistinct, blurry red with gray shapes marking what he thought might be people. He yelped a second time when something grabbed his shoulder and dragged him out into the light. They set him on his feet, and his unused limbs nearly folded. He considered the fact that he only dropped to one knee a triumph, and kept blinking hard against the sand and the grit and the light. It was much cooler outside the trunk: there wasn’t a breeze, but there was at least air.

“Finally!” Sarah complained as she was yanked out of the car. “Three hours is far too long to be penned up with that dork.”

“Hey!” Chuck tried to squint at her, but she looked like the rest of their captors, a gray blob among other gray shadows. “Watch who you’re calling a dork!”

“You. You’re the one I’m calling a dork,” Sarah replied immediately. Chuck saw one gray blob turn to the others; that one must be Sarah. He kept his eyes focused on her until features and characteristics began to filter in: the deep mauve of her shirt, her blue jeans, her boots, the sunny color of hair. “Seriously, are you guys _trying_ to torture me? Three hours with him? Lame-ville!”

Lame-ville?

“Shut up,” a familiar voice said. Mr. Matching Pocket Square had indeed come along to do his own dirty work. Chuck squinted, and he could make out the other man, urbane in a black sweater and charcoal-gray trousers that would no doubt pick up the grit of central California desert. It gave Chuck a tiny modicum of satisfaction. Until enough detail filtered in to inform him that Mr. Matching Pocket Square was holding a gun pointed straight at Sarah. “I want to know everything you know.”

Sarah’s smirk came over loud and clear. “I know you guys don’t know how to treat a lady.”

“Lady?” Chuck heard a voice ask. Oh. That was him. He forced a caustic laugh, and nearly stumbled sideways with the effort. When his side hit the cold barrel of a gun, he froze. Mr. Matching Pocket Square wasn’t the only one armed among their guards. “You? Ha. You’re joking, right?”

“Watch it, jackass!” Sarah lunged toward him. One of the thugs grabbed her by the shoulder to haul her back.

Chuck saw a little red that had nothing to do with seared corneas. He took a deep breath.

“See!” Sarah went on, looking at Matching Pocket Square with indignation. “Absolutely no idea how to treat a lady!”

He merely cocked the gun, a revolver of some type. “Everything you know,” he said.

“All I know is you stuck me in a trunk with some loser for _hours_ ,” Sarah said.

“Hey!” Chuck protested.

“Shut up,” Sarah told him.

“You shut up!”

“I told you to shut up first!”

“Yeah, well, I meant it more!”

“This is what I have to deal with _all the time_ ,” Sarah told Matching Pocket Square, rolling her eyes.

The leader merely pinched the bridge of his nose. He gestured with his gun to two of his flunkies (of which, Chuck had finally discerned, there were five, plus the leader). Something grabbed Chuck above the elbow, making him jump. Thankfully, he didn’t scream or yelp or even squeak particularly loudly as the nearest thug hauled him away from the car. Sarah was tugged along right beside him by a matching crony.

“And what the hell is this even about?” Sarah went on, deliberately raising her voice.

“It’s not cool,” Chuck chimed in. “Three hours in a trunk! What the hell, man?” He said the last bit to his guard.

Sarah glared at him. “Did I give you permission to speak?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, when did you get elected queen of the universe, again? I must have missed it!”

“Buster, you wish I were queen of your universe!”

Chuck forced another laugh. “As if,” he told Sarah, and his voice didn’t sound nearly as certain now. He deliberately put more anger into his words, but he knew he sounded lame. “In your dreams!”

“Ha!” Sarah’s laugh sounded a great deal more authentic than his. “As if you were _ever_ in my dreams, freak!”

The guards kept pulling them away from the car, tugging on their arms to make them walk more quickly. Sarah and Chuck, of course, made it as difficult as possible, though they hid the obvious movements by shouting names at each other.

“Charlatan!”

“Freakazoid!”

“Hussy!”

“ _Hussy_? Dweeb!”

“Doxy!”

“Loser!”

Chuck gasped, and as he did so, noticed the second car. It was about a hundred yards away, black and boxy like the car he and Sarah had been stuffed into, but this time, a passenger stared out from the front seat, white-faced with terror.

Jill.

They’d brought Jill here to witness Chuck and Sarah’s execution. Chuck’s stomach hit his knees.

Sarah’s toe, on the other hand, hit his ankle. “Ha,” she said, drawing his attention sharply back to the matter at hand. “Not even going to try to deny it, loser?” Her eyes conveyed that she, too, had noticed the other car.

Chuck made his sluggish mind keep up. “Who are you calling loser, demon from hell?” he managed, somewhat lamely.

The guard holding Sarah’s arm grumbled. “Can’t we just shoot them, boss?”

Matching Pocket Square glowered him into silence. “On the ground,” he said, pointing his gun at first Chuck, then Sarah. “Kneel. The first one to talk gets to live longer. Who do you work for?”

The guard holding Chuck’s arm tried to force him down. He pretended to stumble sideways, but kept his feet, secretly grateful that all of those years of being clumsy helped him sell the act now.

Sarah made a noise somewhere between “Tch” and “Ugh.” Like Chuck’s, her guard tried to force her to kneel. She didn’t move.

The woman had the core strength to rival pro-wrestlers.

“Working for?” she demanded, flicking an unimpressed look at her guard. “What the hell makes you think we’re working for anybody? My loser of a boss is a stalker, that’s all. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“The big deal,” Matching Pocket Square said as the other guards ranged around Chuck and Sarah in a loose circle, “is that you’re lying to me.”

Sarah’s smirk was sunny and sarcastic. “Am I?”

“Hey, here’s an idea,” Chuck said sourly. “Let’s stop annoying the guy with the really big gun, all right? Geez, you can be such a bitch, you know that?”

Sarah flicked an annoyed look his way. “Shut up, douche-bag.”

It happened like lightning. The instant the word left her lips, Chuck dropped. His knees slammed into the sand in a painful collision, and he threw himself forward just in time. Sarah’s leg passed so close over his head that he felt it ruffle his hair.

His guard wasn’t nearly so lucky. The man dropped Chuck’s arm and received Sarah’s boot to the gut. He flew backward into his buddy as Sarah whipped around, using the momentum to whirl and take her own guard’s feet out from under him.

Chuck didn’t pay attention to the flick of Sarah’s arm, the wet thud of the knife landing in the third guard’s throat. Matching Pocket Square’s arm flew up, the gun swinging in an arc to aim toward Sarah.

Chuck hit him below the ribs with a tackle that would have made Casey proud. The tackle didn’t have quite as much force as he’d hoped, as Chuck had leapt from a crouched position, but Matching Pocket Square still stumbled backwards, Chuck’s mass and velocity forcing him off of his feet. Both men hit the dust with a grunt. Chuck scrambled—pin his arm, Sarah had said, get the gun away from him—but Matching Pocket Square was pretty spry for an older gentleman. He forced his arm out from under Chuck’s, the gun rising.

Chuck, the sight of that gun looming, did the only thing that came to mind. He slammed his free fist into Matching Pocket Square’s side, under the ribcage.

Matching Pocket Square groaned and dropped the gun to curl up like a shrimp.

Chuck didn’t have time to freak out. Sarah’s instructions had been clear and simple: run. Get out of the line of fire, and save yourself, I don’t care what kind of trouble it looks like I’m in.

He snatched Matching Pocket Square’s gun from the dust and started to sprint.

Run. Save yourself.

Get out of the line of fire.

I don’t care what kind of trouble it looks like I’m in.

Trouble.

Chuck stopped running. 

Sarah hated how much he didn’t listen to her, anyway. She could hate him for this, too. Chuck swung around, the gun already up and in the firing position Casey had drilled into his head.

It proved unnecessary. Even as he turned, Sarah’s arm shot out, and she fired three silenced shots.

The last two guards hit the sand with a thud, new bullet holes decorating their shirts.

Sarah, gun at the ready, spun around to assess the situation. She lowered her gun when she saw him standing there, ready to charge to the rescue. “What are you doing here? I told you to get out of the line of fire!”

Chuck, about to protest that he couldn’t leave her alone, instead pointed. Behind Sarah, unseen to her, Matching Pocket Square lurched to his feet. “Sarah, look out!”

She whirled and put a cluster of three into Matching Pocket Square’s chest. He stood there, a shocked expression on that urbane face, before he, too, dropped to the sand like his buddies. Sarah, threat officially neutralized, turned back to Chuck. “I’m not kidding. What are you still doing here?”

“Are they dead?” Chuck asked, venturing a couple of steps closer.

Sarah scowled and tucked the gun back into her waistband, where it would be within easy reach. “Some of them,” she said. “I knocked a couple of them out, though.”

Chuck had to appreciate the honesty, even while his stomach pitched.

Sarah closed the distance between them in a few steps. “Chuck, those men were going to kill us. You understand that, right? They were bringing us out here to shoot us in the head.”

Feeling dizzy and numb, Chuck nodded. Or at least his head jerked up and down. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was actually doing.

“I’m going to search them, find out who they are,” Sarah said, her tone even and almost clinical. “I want you to go to Jill, Chuck. If they were using her, they were probably bringing her out here to watch us die as a lesson. She’s scared, and she needs you. I’ll be in the car in a minute, okay? I need to get some intel.”

Chuck swallowed hard. Put like that, so pragmatically, everything seemed to make sense. Until, he thought, it didn’t. Like, people driving him out into the middle of the desert to shoot him in the head. Why hadn’t he put that together before? He was, after all, really quite fond of his head. It did things like think and eat for him.

“Chuck?” Sarah’s whole demeanor softened. All at once, she didn’t look like the hardcore blonde who had almost single-handedly taken down six men. She looked like his friend Sarah, who would share Thanksgiving picnics on his bedspread and play inane road trip games with him to keep his mind occupied. She laid a hand on his arm, and her skin against his was so warm it felt feverish. “Chuck, I need you to focus for a few more minutes. I need you to be strong for m—for Jill, okay?”

Jill. The look of terror flashed across Chuck’s mind. He felt his head nod. “I can do that,” his voice promised, and he cleared his throat. “I can do that.”

“Good. Go check the first car for water or anything interesting, and go help Jill.”

“Will you be okay?” Chuck felt the need to know before he left.

Sarah’s look softened to match the rest of her. “I’ll be fine, Chuck. Go.”

It felt strange to walk, as if his legs were controlled by puppet strings, his body upheld rigidly, like a soldier at attention. He held up what he hoped was a pacifying hand to Jill as he headed to the first car, the one he and Sarah had been stuffed into.

He checked the glove box. Other than a gun, there was nothing interesting, save vehicle registration. Chuck grabbed both anyway. He also took his laptop from the backseat. He’d entered the Destroy All Data failsafe upon seeing Matching Pocket Square’s gun, but it was better to leave as little evidence as possible. He knew for a fact there was nothing in the trunk, at least, so, juggling the new gun, Matching Pocket Square’s gun, his laptop, and the registration, he headed toward the car with Jill inside.

She cowered back against the opposite door as he fumbled with the passenger door handle.

Chuck popped his head inside. The car was already picking up the day’s warmth. “Are you okay?” he asked, which he knew was a stupid question. Jill’s face had gone roughly the shade of wax paper, and she looked nauseated, which was fitting. He felt the same way. He swallowed hard, ignoring his dry throat. “Jill, are you okay? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

Her eyes were also wide and glassy, a sure sign of shock. “H-hurt me? Why would they hurt me?” 

He gave her an odd look. “So they were trying to scare you?”

“Scare me? Chuck, what are you—”

She broke off with a frail scream.

A second later, Chuck saw why. Sarah popped open the driver’s side door and dropped into the car. She looked over at Chuck. “Get in.”

He obeyed and closed the door. In the backseat, Jill shrank, as if she were physically trying to put as much distance between herself and Sarah as possible. Even though the motion was absurd, Chuck almost didn’t blame her. He’d had a couple of months to get used to Sarah’s lethal ways, and he still sometimes wanted to cower.

Sarah glanced at Jill in the rearview mirror and ignored the fear. “You okay?”

“Wh-what?”

“You hurt?”

“N-no,” Jill said, looking mystified. “They, ah, they didn’t do anything to me.”

“Good.” Sarah started the car. She tossed a handful of licenses, credit cards, and car keys on Chuck’s lap. “Gathered these off the men. Go through them, see if you…” She trailed off with a glance in the rearview mirror at Jill. “Recognize any of them.”

Chuck lifted the first one automatically, but Jill, from the backseat, exploded into motion. “What the hell?” she demanded of Chuck and Sarah. When nothing else seemed to come to mind, she repeated it again, one word at a time. “What. The. Hell?!”

“Relax,” Sarah said, pushing on a pair of sunglasses she’d found on the dash, “we’re the good guys.”

“You’ll excuse me for not finding that the least bit comforting after I saw you kill six men!”

“Four,” Sarah corrected, peeling out as she swerved the car back onto the road.

“Oh, that makes it better,” Jill snapped.

“Technically,” Chuck said, “it does.”

“Not right now Chuck,” Jill told him.

Sarah’s glare in the rearview mirror was ferocious. “Hey!”

“No, it’s okay, Sarah.” Chuck twisted around in the front seat to look at Jill. She’d been yanked out of bed, it seemed, given that she was wearing pajama pants and her hair was in a messy ponytail, even though she’d had time to put in purple butterfly burettes. “They were going to kill us, Jill, but I promise you, Sarah and I, we _are_ the good guys. You’re safe now, okay? Sarah’s gonna, um, save the day.”

“What? Why?”

“Because it’s kind of what she does.” Chuck rubbed his hands over his face and looked at Sarah. “What _is_ the plan, by the way? Are we going back to Burbank? And are we stopping at a bathroom any time within the next, oh, let’s say five minutes?”

“You’ll have to hold it for a little longer than that.” Sarah handed him a cell phone—his. She must have grabbed it off of the guards when she’d searched them. “Call Casey, update him on what’s happened, tell him we’ll contact him in two hours, and toss that out the window. I don’t want them tracking us, which means we’re going to have to lose this car, and fast.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Still, Chuck couldn’t resist turning to the distressed Jill in the backseat, rumpled ponytail and pajamas and all. He wanted to say something comforting. After all, he had dated this woman for years in college, and she had almost witnessed his execution. But all that came out was, “So, um, how’s your day going?”


	32. Room for Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes, hold you head high, look it squarely in eye and say, ‘I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.’ — _Anne Landers_

**25 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**HEARTBRAKE HOTEL (NEAR PIUTE, CA)**   
**13:01 PST**

“I think they got the name wrong,” Chuck said, squinting at what was left of the sign for the Heartbrake Hotel. Either there had been a nuclear attack that had struck in a very contained area or rabid badgers had attacked the single-story-high, blue hotel sign in a very specific fit of rage or revenge. Most of the neon letters had either fallen off or had been gnawed off by said badgers, but the faded outlines remained as ghostly remnants of the hotel’s former glory.

When that glory had been, Chuck had no idea. The Heartbrake Hotel was smack in the middle of a juxtaposition between “nowhere” and “miserable.” It was in a field. A dusty, dirty, desert field twenty minutes from the nearest life form or civilization, which hadn’t been all that impressive to start. The hotel itself was a single-story building, stretching lengthwise along a parking lot that contained only their stolen minivan and an ancient El Camino. The hotel also looked like the building that time had not only forgotten, but had kicked in the face a few times, and stomped on for good measure.

Chuck was positive that he was going to get all manner of venereal diseases merely by looking at it. He was surprised there wasn’t an hourly rate listed anywhere on the badger-eaten sign.

“Or maybe it’s a pun,” he went on, blinking at the misspelled sign. “Like, brake here for a good heart-to-heart? No, that doesn’t make any sense.”

Both of his companions ignored him: Sarah because she was scoping out the outlying landscape, and Jill because she hadn’t said a word since Sarah had tossed her cell phone out the window forty-five minutes before.

“Yeah,” he said, mostly to hear himself talk. “It doesn’t make any sense. You’re right, Chuck. That’s because you’re so smart.”

No response from Jill. Sarah’s lips curved up at the corners, but she kept up her watch. “Okay,” she said, climbing from the minivan. She leaned in to talk through the open window. “Nobody followed us.”

Chuck and Jill glanced around. They could see nothing but dust and desert for miles. To call Sarah paranoid at that moment would have been an understatement.

“Chuck, wait here with Jill. I’m going to get us a room.”

“Okay.” Chuck waited until Sarah had approached the hotel’s questionable office before he sagged back against the seat. He didn’t look at Jill. She was still quiet, but Chuck figured that had more to do with Sarah than anything else. Mission Mode Sarah could get a bit abrupt, whether it was while driving a zigzag pattern to lose any pursuers, or arguing with him whether they should go through the McDonald’s or the Burger King drive-thru. “I guess this wasn’t how you meant to spend today.”

She made a “No kidding” noise.

“But you’re safe now,” Chuck said. He was starting to sound like a broken record, he knew, but Jill didn’t seem to want to talk about the Fulcrum people that had used her, and he couldn’t really think of anything to say. He’d spent a few weeks sitting outside her apartment, but when faced with her alone in a van in the middle of nowhere, it was as though his vocabulary withered.

“Are you sure that…” Jill trailed off and shook her head. “Chuck, what happened to you? Where did you go?”

“What?” Chuck twisted to look back in the backseat. Jill had grown more frazzled and frantic over the past couple of hours. She didn’t handle stress well, Chuck remembered. Around finals, Jill had always turned into an almost unrecognizable wreck. Right now, he was seeing echoes of that, but there was nothing to suggest that she’d had a complete break with reality. “I didn’t go anywhere. I’m right here, Jill.” He spoke the words slowly.

“Five years ago,” Jill said. “You didn’t go to Poland, like you told me at the game, did you?” 

“I didn’t go anywhere.” Unsurprisingly, while it hurt to lie to Morgan, it was easy to lie to Jill. Go figure, Chuck thought.

“You never wrote back.”

“Because you dumped me,” Chuck said before his brain could stop his mouth. He was surprised that his voice sounded resigned rather than bitter or furious or anything else on that end of the emotional spectrum. But then, he’d spent his morning in a trunk and had survived his own execution. Now he was the next best thing to a fugitive while Sarah and Casey figured out how much of his identity had gotten out.

He was bound to be a little tired.

“What did you expect me to say?” he went on. “Good letter, your dumping skills are just top-notch? You dumped me, Jill. It’s not exactly _protocol_ to respond to a letter like that with anything but maybe the finger. Unless I want to come across as a whiny bitch.”

Jill blinked hard a couple of times.

Oh, right. Chuck Bartowski of the Stanford days hadn’t talked like that. Chuck scrubbed his hands over his face. “I didn’t mean that,” he said, then considered. “Actually, yes, I did, but I didn’t.”

“What happened to you, Chuck? What have they done to you?” Jill grabbed the driver’s side headrest and pulled herself forward, a scowl etched into her face. “Did Sarah get you involved in something?”

“Sarah? What? No. Why would you even think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Chuck.” Jill’s voice turned waspish. “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that today alone I’ve seen her kill four men that told me they worked for the government, break into an ATM, and steal a car. That sort of behavior doesn’t worry you? She’s probably in there right now flashing her tits at the hotel manager to get us a free room. And she made me throw my phone away.”

Chuck turned fully in his seat. “Don’t ever talk about her like that again. Sarah saved both of our lives today,” he said, his voice barely audible. His whole body was vibrating like a plucked string, but his face and voice remained absolutely calm, a direct contrast to the ugly and black miasma boiling through his midsection. “In case you haven’t realized this, Jill, they were going to shoot us in the head. I don’t know what they told you, but these were not good guys. These were very dangerous people.”

“Good to know you’re buying the company line.”

“Company li—Jill, did you happen to miss the part where they _put us in a trunk_? That is not a sign of a good person! A good person puts groceries in the trunk, not people!” Chuck glared. “Sarah threw your phone out the window because we’re off the grid. And for the record, I got into this and then met her, not the other way around.”

“And how do you know you can trust her?”

“Because.”

“That’s not a very logical reason.”

Chuck turned again so that he was facing the front of the car. “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” he said, and paused, waiting for the guilty conscience to strike. It didn’t. He didn’t owe Jill a thing. She’d cut those ties years before, which meant he no longer owed her a single thing on this godforsaken earth. 

Except, his brain nagged, for the part where she had been used by a shadowy government organization that he was tasked with tracking down. They had been using her grad student research, probably threatening her, all the while telling her they were—

“Wait a second,” Chuck said, setting aside his anger as a new thought occurred to him. “Those men told you they worked for the government?”

The abrupt subject change seemed to throw Jill off-stride, for she frowned at him. “Yes,” she said. “They told me they worked for the CDC, and that you and Sarah were terrorists.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Chuck said. “I’m not a terrorist, I work for—”

“Ahem.”

Both Chuck and Jill looked over; Sarah had arrived as silently as usual. She folded her arms over her chest and gave Chuck an unreadable look, one eyebrow slightly raised above the other. Though Chuck shrank back against his seat, expecting a scold, Sarah only said, “C’mon, we’re in room thirteen.”

“Oh, that’s a good sign,” Chuck muttered.

“Here’s the key.” Sarah tossed it to him as she climbed into the driver’s seat. “You two go inside while I pull the van around the back. Give Casey a call.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to call him?” Chuck asked, hope in his voice. 

“He’ll have cooled down by now.”

Chuck gave her a look.

“Maybe,” Sarah conceded. “But do it anyway.”

“Yes, Mom.” Chuck climbed out of the car and jerked his head to indicate that Jill should follow him. The gun he’d taken from Matching Pocket Square rubbed against his lower back. In addition to freaking him out, it would probably give him a rash. He’d wanted to ditch the gun, but Sarah had been adamant. They had no idea what they were facing. They had no idea if Fulcrum knew who they were, or if Fulcrum was tracking them and Jill, or even what sort of danger they were all in. Until they knew something for sure, Chuck was to be armed at all times.

His little fiasco with the stalking was growing more and more serious every time he thought about it. Casey had already secured Awesome and Ellie at a safe-house. The hotel would serve as the rendezvous later because he was going into protective custody until they got a lid on the situation. He was also trying not to think about it. Sarah would be there. Both Casey and Sarah had mentioned they would stay with him every step of the way. Sarah had seemed calm about it. Casey had grumbled.

Dust swirled up on the walkway as he and Jill trudged to the room’s door. Though it was November, the heat from the surrounding bleakness was almost uncomfortably warm. He unlocked the door and went in before Jill. If there was something waiting to jump out at them in the room, it was only chivalrous to provide the larger target first.

There was nothing in the room. Well, nothing alive, he amended, wrinkling his nose. The smell alone told him something had died in the not so recent past, but he could see no evidence of a corpse on the room’s stained and spotted carpet, nor was there a dead body under the bed. The bathroom held a few cadavers, but those were of the insect variety. Perhaps the interesting patch of mold in the corner was alive, but Chuck doubted it. The interior decorator should probably have been shot for the garish bedspread and curtains, but that was a crime against fashion, not a murder.

“I wouldn’t touch anything. You might get hepatitis,” he told Jill as he picked up the room phone. He listened to the options before he dialed. Casey had given him the number to a burner that Fulcrum wouldn’t be able to trace. As a precaution, he’d written the first six digits on his hand, but Sarah had hit a bump while he’d been writing, so the three looked like a nine.

He wondered why he hadn’t just told Sarah the number. She had a damn near photographic memory anyway.

While the phone rang, Chuck picked up the room service menu. It bore the date 1971 in the corner. He put the menu down.

Casey picked up the phone. “Casey.”

“No, I’m Chuck,” Chuck said automatically.

If it was possible to strangle somebody through a phone-line, Chuck would have been peeling Casey’s fingers from his neck. For the first time, Chuck saw the benefit of being in a hotel in the middle of nowhere. 

**25 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**HEARTBRAKE HOTEL ROOM THIRTEEN**   
**14:21 PST**

“My whole life is about to change.” Jill’s voice, quiet and logical, cut across the silence that had fallen over the hotel room. She didn’t look up from where she was sitting on the edge of the bed—a brave move, Chuck felt, as he wasn’t sure anybody had washed those sheets during any of their lifetimes—huddled forward as though if she could make herself as tiny as possible, her words wouldn’t be true. She seemed unbelievably fragile.

Sarah let the window curtain fall back into place. She had taken up the vigil as soon as she had come into the room, standing with her back to the wall and peering sideways out the window, a gun in her free hand. “Yes,” she said now. “It is.” There was empathy in her words that made Chuck shift his eyes toward her. She didn’t look at him, however, focused as she was on Jill. “Plans are already underway to escort you to a safe-house where you’ll be protected until the Marshals can furnish you with a new identity.”

“Provided I tell you about what I know about Fulcrum, right?” Jill asked without looking up.

Sarah turned back to the window. “It would expedite the process.”

“And expedite just how fast Fulcrum breaks through your security of whatever mysterious ghost organization you’re from, and shoots me in my sleep?”

At the desk, Chuck sat up a little straighter. That was an incredibly dark statement.

Sarah didn’t seem at all fazed by it, though. “My team isn’t Fulcrum,” she said, her voice almost bored in its calm reassurance. “I’ve vetted every single member myself.”

Jill scoffed. Sarah turned slightly, an eyebrow raised. Jill’s chin went up.

“Suit yourself,” Sarah said after a few seconds of hard eye contact. “But you’ve got better odds of surviving with Chuck and me than you do without.”

Better odds of surviving with Sarah, Chuck corrected silently. If somebody hung around him too long, they were bound to end up kidnapped, facing a bomb, knocked out by insane robots with tiny darts, or stuffed in a trunk and shipped off to be executed. He’d seen a Stormtrooper fight an Ewok with better odds. Of course, Sarah had been present for three of those events, so the odds weren’t exactly great with her, either.

Still, they’d lived through their crazy misadventures. So there had to be something said for that.

Jill, though, apparently had nothing to say. She remained silent and hunched forward on the bed.

“Nobody’s going to break security and kill you,” Sarah said, and turned back to keep watch out the window. “I mean what I say.”

“She does. She’s always very careful about what words she uses,” Chuck agreed from the only chair in the room, speaking up for the first time in awhile. He had been absorbed with not thinking about how close he and Sarah had come to dying. His way of doing so had been to review the latest _Call of Duty_ compound level specs that Morgan had designed to take on the Large Mart crew. Unless he missed his guess, Sarah’s was to keep a paranoid watch for Casey, who wouldn’t arrive for at least another hour. Jill, he didn’t know. She had been quiet.

All thoughts of video games vanished now. At Sarah’s pointed glance, he moved over to sit beside Jill. He didn’t put an arm around her or touch her. It didn’t matter that they had been intimate or had biblical knowledge of each other, or however the term went. She was simply no longer in the group of people he felt comfortable touching. Sarah would be a better candidate for this sort of thing, Chuck thought desperately. She knew exactly when to squeeze his wrist, or pat his arm or his knee, or even when to simply bump him with a shoulder.

Jill didn’t seem to know that, for she leaned toward him. Chuck refrained from jumping back only through steely resolve.

“Tell us what happened to you today,” he said, deliberately not looking at Sarah. “Let’s just start with that, okay?”

It took a minute for Jill to start speaking, and when she did, she addressed the floor. “Lawrence got me out of bed,” she said.

“Lawrence?” Sarah asked.

“The leader. The one who was going to—the one who had his gun pointed at you.”

“Black sweater?” Chuck asked, just to be sure; all of the thugs had had guns pointed at them.

Jill nodded. “He pounded on my door at like six in the morning.” She looked down at her purple-striped pajama pants and her sleep T-shirt. “He wanted to know why I had two ICE agents tracking me.”

ICE agents? Before Chuck could open his mouth and ask why they would think that, he caught Sarah’s signal. It was only a twitch of the hand, but from her, it might have been a shout.

Drop it. 

Oh, right, he remembered. Behind their driver’s licenses and other IDs, all of the Prometheus agents carried around ICE badges instead of NSA/CIA identification. Lawrence and the other Fulcrum agents had thought that he and Sarah were Sean Fitzgerald and Jaime Winter, as Sarah Walker was supposed to be somewhere in Africa, and John Casey was…Chuck couldn’t remember.

“I told him I had no idea,” Jill said, going on. She hadn’t noticed the unspoken communication between the spies. “I mean, I’m fifth-generation Californian, so I was pretty confused until Lawrence showed me a picture of you, Chuck. He said that you had been tracking me, and that you were trying to steal my research. He called you a terrorist. He said they’d run a background on you and that you were a double-agent.”

“I really hate the words ‘double-agent,’” Chuck said.

“So are you?” Jill looked between them. “Agents, I mean? Do you work for ICE?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Sarah said, and resumed her vigil out the window. “But for the time being, you can go ahead and assume that. Go on with your story.”

Though Jill eyed Sarah for a few seconds longer, she nodded and licked her lips. She took a deep breath and continued, “I told Lawrence that you were nobody, Chuck. Nobody important, just some guy from my past.”

That one hurt a little.

“I didn’t want Lawrence getting the wrong idea,” Jill went on quickly, noticing his flinch. “I told him you were maybe checking up on me, that you weren’t involved in the government stuff, but they said somebody was tracking my phone with a government satellite.”

Sarah gave Chuck the hairy eyeball. Chuck immediately tried to shrink to a smaller size. As he was over six feet tall, it didn’t work so well. 

“You used a satellite, Chuck?” Sarah demanded through her teeth.

“Di—Dave wasn’t using it! And I was doing it to protect Jill!” When the women gave him varying looks, one skeptical, one mystified, Chuck barreled on. “I was delivering a letter to your place,” he explained to Jill, “on Thanksgiving. And I saw Lawrence coming out of your apartment, and he seemed like a bad dude, so I grabbed his cell phone.”

He heard Sarah’s quiet hiss of breath and figured she probably had yet to forgive him for that one. He hurried onward.

“There was some pretty heavy encryption on it, but I didn’t fl—he wasn’t in any of the government databases, so I got a little worried. I was worried, that was all.” Chuck said the last part to Sarah who, though she was staring at a fixed point out the window, had obviously tensed. “And I should have gone to Sarah about it before she came to me, and Lawrence and his guys jumped us.”

“They said they were just going to scare you,” Jill said.

“What?” Sarah asked.

“When they put you in the trunk. Lawrence dragged me out to the car, and he said they were taking the two of you to the desert to scare you a little before they handed you over to the authorities. They said it was only right since you were terrorists, and you’d betrayed our country. They were only going to scare you.”

Chuck didn’t believe that for a second. From her posture, it seemed Sarah agreed. If Lawrence had only intended to frighten them, Hollywood had missed out on a terrific actor. The man’s eyes had spoken of every intention of murder. “Why did they bring you along when they were just going to, uh, scare us?”

“I don’t know how their minds work!” Jill rocked forward, possibly in agitation. She looked miserable and bedraggled, still curled inward protectively. Inexplicably, the butterfly barettes in her hair caught a patch of sunlight through a slit in the curtain, and glittered. “This is the most I’ve seen of them, really. They’re not very hands-on. Lawrence approached me and a couple of my classmates awhile ago. He claimed that I would be doing my country a great service.”

“You weren’t,” Sarah said bluntly. “That man was a traitor.”

“Sarah, maybe we should go a little easy on her?” Chuck gave Sarah a significant look. It hadn’t been Jill’s fault.

Jill, on the other hand, shook her head. “No, she’s right, Chuck. I should have checked. I should have done more than trusted them blindly and—oh, my God.” Jill’s hands flew to her mouth, and she went roughly the color of parchment. “My research—they were taking my research to do bad things to people—oh, my God.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Chuck said, awkwardly patting Jill’s shoulder. She’d begun to shake, which made him nervous. He looked to Sarah for guidance, but she was studying Jill intently, one hand still wrapped in the dusty curtain. 

“When did they first approach you?” she asked.

Jill lowered her hands and took a deep breath, trying to pull it together. She was still shaking. “Two years ago.”

“What month?”

“December.”

“How did they approach you?”

“What do you mean?”

“How? Where? Was it in your office? Did they contact you by phone? At home?” Sarah flicked a glance out the window and returned her gaze to Jill, who took another deep, bolstering breath.

“It was in the lab,” Jill said. “At school.”

“How many of them?”

“Two. Lawrence and Agent—Agent Wilkes.”

“How did they introduce themselves to you?”

“They said they worked for the CDC.”

“Are they paying you for your research?”

“I get a stipend every month. It’s not a lot, but, you know, grad student here.”

Sarah opened her mouth to fire off the next lightning round of questions, but Chuck lunged forward almost comically, hands thrown up. “Whoa, whoa, what’s up with the twenty questions on speed?”

Sarah raised an eyebrow at him. Even if they hadn’t seen each other every day for the past two months, he would have been able to translate the look: do you have something better to do?

Chuck had to admit that he did not, but the questions felt a little harsh.

“It’s okay,” Jill said, dropping her gaze back to the floor. She’d been leaning back, away from Sarah, but she curved forward now. “Maybe I should write this down, like a testimony? If it will ‘expedite the process’ and keep me safe?”

It took a moment for Sarah to nod her agreement. “Good idea. I don’t think this is the type of motel that comes with that in the room. Chuck, why don’t you go out to the van and see if there’s a pen and paper in there?”

Chuck gave Jill an awkward pat on the shoulder and rose to his feet. “I’ll be right back,” he promised rather uselessly, and headed outside, jerking his head at Sarah. She followed him.

“What?” she asked as she closed the door behind them.

“I know this seems like a silly thing for me to point out, but you know how much danger there is between me and that van? It’s all the way around the building, and we know my track record for these things.”

“Chuck?” Sarah kept her eyes on his even as she carefully reached around him and pulled out Lawrence’s gun. She pushed it into his hands. “There’s a reason I wanted you to hang onto this.”

“Even so.” The weight of the gun, as always, dragged against his hands, too heavy for such a small object. He pushed it back into his waistband and forced his face to grin at Sarah, though the reminder that he was now a gun-carrying member of Operation Prometheus sapped most of his humor. He bolstered it with a feeble joke. “Think of the track record. It’s bad. Like, ‘Star Wars Christmas Special’ proportions here.”

“And yet you’re still breathing.” Sarah shook her head at him, returning the smile. “On a scale of one to ten, how much are you freaking out right now?”

“Factoring in the fact that we were almost executed in the desert, and now I’m sharing a hotel room with my ex and my partner?”

Sarah smiled.

“Four,” Chuck said.

“Then you’re fine. Just, ah, hurry. I’m not saying you should run, but—hurry.”

“Yes’m.” Chuck turned to go, but spun around again before Sarah could go into the hotel room. “Ellie and Devon are okay, right?”

“Casey got them to the safe-house first thing. He’ll have set them up with food, water, wine, whiskey, whatever they need. The house is off the grid. It’s safe.”

“How do you know it’s really safe?”

“Because I set it up.” Sarah rubbed his arm once, elbow to shoulder. “While I was setting up Castle. I paid cash for it, put a fake name on the lease.”

“Do you ever sleep?”

Though that made Sarah smile, she continued, “Even Casey didn’t know about it until today. And the instant we get Jill to the Marshals, either Casey or I will go get them. Don’t worry. Prometheus won’t be split up.”

“Okay.” Chuck took a deep breath. “That four is now a three, but I still feel like I should point out the foolishness of me going to the car alone.”

“You’ve got a gun. Go on.” Sarah smirked and pushed her palm against his upper arm, possibly to propel him forward. Or at least she tried to. Chuck had already started to turn to go again, his joke delivered, so Sarah’s hand swiped across his shoulder and down one shoulder blade. It threw her off balance enough that she had to step forward. Since Chuck had frozen at the first touch, he had stopped in the middle of his turn. Sarah’s corrective step put their faces mere inches apart, the front of her body flush up against his side.

They stayed stock still, two partners trapped in some absurd dance in the middle of a sunny November afternoon. One of them should have leapt back with a laugh, delivering a smiling apology, but neither moved. Instead, there was nothing but the kick of the breeze, whistling slightly as it rustled dust along the corridor formed by the overhang and the rusted pillars, the heat of midday, the sound of his breath, oddly loud, and her. From this distance, he could see the fine detail of every feature, freckle, and pore. Her eyes had a pattern in the blue-grey like rich marble. He could see the patrician arch of an eyebrow, the curve of her cheek.

What the hell was he doing? He should step away. Instead, he wanted to move closer, to crowd against her. He wanted to put his hands up on either side of her face, and just rub the side of his thumb against her cheek, to know if the skin felt as soft as it looked. She looked vital. She shouldn’t have. They were in the middle of the desert, they had survived insurmountable odds. He could see the stress pulling at the corners of her eyes and lips, but she still looked so amazing and steady and _present_.

“Chuck.” Sarah barely moved her lips, but he heard the word clearly. Somehow, they had started to lean toward each other, like some gravitational force was tugging them close. Sarah’s expression hadn’t changed, but her shoulders were heaving, as though she was having a hard time drawing breath.

He was feeling somewhat breathless himself, actually.

“Yes?” he asked. He didn’t dare move. He wasn’t sure if he could.

“Either move,” she said, her eyes locked on his in a way that might have been significant, “or don’t.”

That was an odd thing to say. Chuck almost squinted at her, wondering exactly what she possibly meant by that. The way she said it, the slight tilt of her head on each word, the fact that her eyes were so hot on his they were burning, it all seemed telling. He opened his mouth to ask what she meant, but belatedly realized that he was between her and the hotel room door.

“Oh,” he said, blinking away his stupor. “Oh, right. I guess I should get out of your way, right?” 

Sarah actually gaped at him as he shuffled sideways to give her access to the door. It wasn’t a mildly startled look, or a surprised expression, or even perplexed. This was the very picture of shock. In about two seconds, her jaw would drop.

Now he did squint at her. “Sarah? Are you okay?”

She put her palm to her forehead and rubbed her hand down her face. “I…yeah. You make my head hurt, that’s all.”

Concern sprang up. “What’s the matter?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Sarah dropped her hand and gave, of all things, a little laugh. “I should know better by now. Go get the pen and paper, Chuck, and hurry, will you? I’ve left Jill alone too long.”

“O-okay.” Chuck would have liked to press the issue, but Sarah’s face had shifted back to some facsimile of Mission Mode Sarah. He could argue. He had a chance of winning said argument. But Sarah was right: they had left Jill alone too long. So he gave Sarah a salute and trotted away. His system still felt a bit disconnected, as though he’d just surfaced from deep-sea diving or stepped out into a bright day from a dark room, but he shook it off. 

Sarah’s paranoia had evidently rubbed off on him enough that he kept an eye out as he rounded the corner of the building, one hand on the hilt of the stolen gun. There was nothing but dust and a few scrubby patches of yellowed grass. No, Chuck corrected as he moved to the minivan Sarah had carjacked from a Park’n’Ride parking lot, there was a tumbleweed blowing across the dust a few feet away.

He took a few seconds to watch it tumble.

There was a small notebook, squashed by time and circumstance, under the passenger seat. It bore a picture of a unicorn, pink and sparkly, on the cover. Not exactly the most appropriate thing in the world for a testimony, but Chuck pocketed it anyway. As he did so, something on the floor glinted at the corner of his eye, so he bent to get a closer look.

One of the licenses Sarah had lifted off either a dead or unconscious man had lodged itself between the seats. Chuck picked it up and studied it carefully, half-expecting to flash now that he was calmer. Nicholas Goldfarb didn’t look like a Fulcrum agent. He looked like a history teacher, or somebody’s mild-mannered uncle. 

He had pointed a gun at Sarah’s head this morning.

And Sarah had killed him for it. 

Chuck pulled open the sliding door and sat on the van’s floor for a minute, still staring at the license. History teacher, he thought again. He glanced at the address, height, weight, and eye color, all of the information innocuous. Innocuous, he thought again, but this man posed a threat. He’d posed a direct threat to Sarah, and for years, he’d posed a threat to Jill.

Nicholas Goldfarb, Chuck mused, and memorized all of the information on the license. There was certainly no way to know the face of your enemy, he mused, not in the game that he and Casey and Sarah were playing. There was only hope that you saw him coming, and that you had plans put in place that would let you escape. Or you shot first. Whatever.

And your life could change just as easily as somebody dragging you out of bed one morning.

Chuck dropped the license in his pocket, next to the notebook. Jill’s life was going to change. She would go into witness protection, but there would always be that need to look over her shoulder for an enemy she probably wouldn’t recognize. Until they knew if his own situation was contained, Chuck’s life would also change, but the need to look over his shoulder wasn’t a new one. Where would they relocate the team? He could only hope for someplace warm. After freezing for five years in Siberia, he should have requested somewhere tropical and warmer than Burbank.

Sarah might have appreciated the chance to wear a bikini. Given her exercise outfits, she seemed averse to a lot of clothing, so the tropics would have suited her.

And now was not really the time to be thinking about Sarah in a bikini.

 _Either move, or don’t_. That was a strange thing to say to a guy blocking your way. _You’re in my way, Chuck,_ made a lot more sense, as did _I need to get inside, but you’re stopping me, so maybe you should step aside?_

And while he was on the subject of Sarah, why wasn’t he freaking out more? Chuck wondered it as he watched the tumbleweed frolic across the field. He’d watched Sarah take out six guards. When Bryce had shot _one_ guard, he’d almost had a breakdown on the spot, and he and Bryce certainly had loads more history together than he and Sarah had. Instead, Sarah had used the guards’ own weapons to kill or injure all of them and instead of hyperventilating or running away, he was sitting calmly on the floor of a stolen van, out in the open, while inside, Sarah waited, guarding his ex-girlfriend, who would soon be on her way to witness protection.

By all rights, he should be curled up in a ball, able to do no more than whimper.

Of course, he thought, frowning and kicking at a rock in the dirt, there were differences. He’d genuinely thought Bryce was a traitor at the time. And today, Sarah had saved both of their lives, and he’d had plenty of advance warning since Sarah had told him the plan. Bryce was a deadly spy, enigmatic to the ends of the earth. Sarah was constantly there, just being patient, or amused, usually touching his arm or rubbing up against him or…not acting like a federal agent should, Chuck thought. 

But maybe that made sense. Sure, he and Sarah had had kind of an unorthodox beginning, what with having been on the run from good guys, bad guys, and Chuck’s phobias. That probably explained it. They were partners, but they were friends, too. He trusted her enough to put his sister’s life in her hands, after all.

Ellie had to be freaking out right now, too. Chuck wished that he could call her, reassure her that things were going to be okay, but it was better to communicate as little as possible until they knew more. Phone calls could be traced. People could be followed; somebody could attack Ellie and Captain Awesome.

Sarah had said they were safe.

He couldn’t imagine being Jill right now, having to trust people who wouldn’t give her their real jobs or identities. Chuck trusted Sarah completely, and he was still nervous about what would happen with Devon and Ellie. He couldn’t imagine how Jill felt about herself, or her parents or…

Jill hadn’t mentioned her parents.

That was a little odd, Chuck decided as he picked up a pen from the floor. He pushed himself to his feet and shut the sliding door. If an evil government organization had been threatening him, he would do nothing but freak out about Ellie. And he knew Jill was just as close to her parents. They’d used to joke about it all the time at Stanford, how Jill was always reluctant to leave home because she missed her mom, or playing golf with her dad.

Had it just not occurred to her that Fulcrum was a threat to those people?

No, Chuck had asked Sarah about Ellie and Awesome in front of her. With the way Jill’s mind worked, and he knew this well, she would have jumped to the logical conclusion: wondering about her own family.

So why hadn’t she?

Something began to whisper at the back of his brain, a voice that couldn’t be ignored. When he had seen Jill in the second car, he had assumed she was there because they were teaching her a lesson. He had assumed that Lawrence was taking her research against her will. What if…

Chuck dropped the pen.

Jill hadn’t been used by Fulcrum.

Jill _was_ Fulcrum.

“Oh, hell,” Chuck breathed, and began sprinting. He’d left Sarah alone with a Fulcrum agent, and she probably had no idea. His long legs tore up the ground in huge strides. He didn’t stumble or trip. He didn’t dare, not when Sarah had no idea that she was alone with the enemy. He raced around the side of the hotel and sprinted at the room, full-tilt. About twenty feet away from the room, his survival instincts kicked in. If he raced to the door, and Jill hadn’t attacked Sarah, the CIA agent was likely to shoot him.

She’d regret it, but that didn’t matter. Chuck really didn’t want to get shot today.

He skidded to a halt and, panting hard, crept toward the hotel room. When he saw Sarah giving him a puzzled look through the window, his heart gave one single bound of relief.

Until he saw Jill over Sarah’s shoulder, holding the heavy hotel phone over her head and poised to strike.

“Sarah, look out!”

Jill swung. 


	33. Just Say The Word, Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us—and those around us—more effectively. Look for the learning. — _Louisa May Alcott_

**25 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**HEARTBRAKE HOTEL ROOM THIRTEEN**   
**14:53 PST**

Sarah reacted with catlike grace. Before Chuck’s words were even fully out of his mouth, she bounced forward, ricocheting off the hotel room window, and in one smooth movement, spun and drove her fist into Jill’s stomach. Jill crumpled forward. The phone clattered to the floor loudly enough that Chuck heard it even outside the hotel room.

Sarah followed the sock to the gut with an overhand swing of the left arm. The side of her fist chopped against the side of Jill’s chin.

Jill hit the ground with a thud, out cold.

Chuck stared in shock at the vapor smudges Sarah’s hands had left on the window when she’d smacked into it. Oh, crap, was all he could think. Sarah had moved like the freaking wind. Somehow her contained, controlled takedown of Jill Roberts, PhD in training, was more frightening than killing four men and knocking another two unconscious.

He was never, ever, _ever_ going to cross Sarah.

Inside the room, Sarah shook her fist out once, the only sign that hitting Jill might have hurt. She knelt next to Jill, grabbed the other woman’s lax hands, and yanked them behind her back. Only then did she look up and meet Chuck’s gaze through the window.

Odd, he thought in that first split second. He’d expected her to look fierce, pissed off, like a vengeful goddess or one of the Furies. Instead, she looked weary. She jerked her head at him once: get inside.

He fumbled for the room key in his pocket and hastened to obey. “Is she dead?” he asked as he came in, fear for Jill, fear of Jill, a healthy, respecting fear of Sarah all mixing to form a potent brew in his stomach.

“No, she’s unconscious. She’ll be out for another thirty seconds or so. Any longer and we’ll call the paramedics.” Sarah scowled and settled back on her haunches, Jill’s hands still pinned. “I didn’t want to actually hit her.”

“She was about to club you with a phone!”

“I knew she was there.”

That made Chuck blink. “How?”

“I heard her coming. She’s pretty quiet, but I have ears like a cat. Crap.” Sarah slapped Jill’s face again, scowling. “I really, really didn’t want this to happen.”

“Then why did it?”

“You startled me.” Sarah looked disgruntled as she transferred Jill’s wrists to one hand. She leaned over to tap her fingers against the uninjured side of Jill’s face, trying to rouse her. “I almost had her, and you startled me. Her jaw is going to hurt like a bitch.”

Chuck sucked air through his teeth. “She’s Fulcrum, Sarah,” he said, trying hard not to stare at Jill’s body on the floor. No matter what Sarah said, she _looked_ dead.

“I got the memo, trust me. Do me a favor and strip the sheets off the bed.”

“Wh-what?”

“I need some way to bind her.”

“Those sheets haven’t been washed in forever!”

Sarah gave him a level look. “Then it’s a good thing we’re not hopping between them. The sheets, Chuck.”

Put like that, there was little way he could argue, so Chuck, after another uncertain look at Jill, rose to do her bidding. Gingerly, he pulled back the paisley-patterned bedspread. His ex-girlfriend was Fulcrum. His ex-girlfriend had joined the same organization that was out to get him, that had tried to turn his best friend into a double-agent. What were the odds? When the hell had that happened? Jill Roberts wasn’t evil—save for trying to clock Sarah with a phone—so she didn’t _fit_. Were they wrong about Fulcrum?

Six men had driven them out to the desert and tried to kill them.

No, they weren’t wrong about Fulcrum.

He grabbed the corner of the sheets and tried simultaneously to not freak out and to keep his face—well, any exposed epidermis, really—away from the bedclothes. 

For sheets that hadn’t been washed in his lifetime, however, they smelled surprisingly strongly of Downy.

“Heh,” he said without meaning to.

“What is it?”

“Apparently they _do_ have housekeeping here. Guess it might not be a bad thing to jump into bed with these sheets.”

“Just say the word, Chuck.”

“Wha-huh?” Chuck, the sheets halfway off an oddly-clean mattress, whirled.

Sarah flicked one single, searing look over her shoulder. “The sheets,” she said, nodding at them. “She’s waking up, and I want to tie her up before she’s too coherent.”

But Chuck didn’t move for a minute. Just say the word? 

Just like that?

What the hell?

It was stress, he thought. It had to be. Sarah was normally a very touchy-feely type person, and they’d been fugitives for a couple of hours, and captives for hours before that. She’d taken out six people in the desert. She had a Fulcrum agent to handle and Chuck to keep calm, and Casey was still awhile away. And that wouldn’t be the end of things. Who knew how far word of their identity had spread throughout Fulcrum? There was no way to know if Chuck was safe.

It had to be stress. Right?

Eyeing her, he turned back to do her bidding, yanking the rest of the sheets off of the mattress and bundling them up. “Got them,” he said, turning back to her. “What do I do with them?”

“Tear off long strips, six inches wide.” Sarah tossed him a knife. She lifted an eyebrow as he fielded it easily. “To get the strips started,” she explained.

“Oh.” He ripped the first strip and passed it over to her. She seemed to be deliberately avoiding his gaze, and that puzzled him.

Stress, he repeated to himself. Sarah didn’t mean “Just say the word” literally. She was Sarah freaking Walker. He’d seen her do about ten million epic things in their short time together, and not just when he’d been monitoring and doctoring surveillance for the Walker-Larkin Wonder Team. She flew planes through Eastern Europe, she knocked him unconscious in the middle of one of the busiest sites in Athens and she got away with it, she baked meringue pies, she could single-handedly take on the entire cast of Mortal Kombat. There was no way that Sarah Walker could possibly want _him_. So she was just reacting to the situation with a bad joke, even if she’d seemed serious.

When he’d ripped up most of the sheet, he moved to Jill’s other side to help Sarah bind the Fulcrum agent, sneaking looks at Sarah every once in awhile. She either didn’t notice, or she ignored him.

Until she cleared her throat. “A little tighter on the bindings, Chuck.”

“I don’t want to cut off her circulation.”

“You won’t.” When Chuck hesitated, Sarah reached over and tightened the straps holding Jill’s wrist herself. She didn’t jerk them or seem overly impatient. She merely tugged until the straps were snug, and tied them off. The action put her face close to Chuck’s. He could smell their day on her: sweat, dust, motor oil from the trunk, and the ever-present underlying scent of apples from her shampoo. Her eyes cut up, met his, and she raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” Belatedly, Chuck realized that he had started to tilt closer to her. He pulled back.

“Okay.” Sarah’s eyes lingered on his for a second longer before she focused her attention back on Jill. She frowned. 

“How long do you think she’s been Fulcrum?” Chuck asked, not looking at either Sarah or Jill. They both felt like they had minefields surrounding them and if he just _looked_ at them the wrong way, things might explode in his face, horribly.

Sarah was too busy pulling up Jill’s eyelid and shining a penlight from the stolen van keys into the other woman’s pupil. “Long enough to have a set cover story in place,” she replied after a minute, distracted. “Why don’t you go grab us some waters from the machine by the lobby? I don’t trust the pipes here.”

“Yeah, probably don’t want to die of lead poisoning after all we’d gone through today. Do you think that would count as ironic?”

Calling the hotel’s squat office a lobby was a bit generous, in Chuck’s opinion. The room smelled like dust, cats, and sour milk, and the décor had been designed by either a colorblind, drug-addled Martha Stewart, or a vengeful ’50s housewife out to slaughter good taste. When the desk worker rolled his chair away from a computer that had survived the Nixon era, Chuck figured out where the smell of sour milk was coming from. He tried to silence the instinctual gag as he set the twenty Sarah had given him on the desk. “Need some change for that,” he said, purposely breathing through his mouth. 

“Sure, no problem.” The worker blinked red-rimmed eyes that made Chuck wonder which room housed the meth lab, and grabbed the twenty. “You need what, fives? Singles?”

“Singles and two fives.”

The worker pulled out an ancient cash box and brushed irritably at the cobwebs. He kept sneaking looks at Chuck. Chuck kept breathing through his mouth.

Finally, the worker cleared his throat. “You tap that?” he asked.

Chuck coughed. “Excuse me?”

“The blonde.” A wolfish grin spread over the worker’s pasty face. “She said you weren’t to be disturbed, you lucky dog.”

Probably because there was a Fulcrum agent tied to the desk chair with bed sheets. Had Sarah known even then that Jill was Fulcrum? Had she figured that something was going to go down? It made more sense than any “tapping.” Chuck took the stack of bills from the worker, trying not to frown. “Uh, yeah,” he said. No harm in letting a complete stranger think the wrong thing.

“Sweet!” The worker held up a hand for a high-five.

Chuck stared at it. Given the reek of eau de hotel worker, he had no idea how long it had been since the man had seen the inside the shower, much less where that hand had been. He covered by giving a rueful smile and backing away, his hands held up in apology.

The worker shrugged and dropped his hand. Given the cocktail of hallucinogens and other mind-altering chemicals in the man’s bloodstream, Chuck didn’t figure the disappointment would last too long. He gave another apologetic smile ad headed for the door, only to be stopped by the worker’s, “Hey, dude?”

Chuck turned slowly. “Yeah?”

“How much do you have to pay for a woman like that?”

_Just say the word, Chuck._

“Uh.” Chuck cleared his throat. “Not enough.”

“So, like, two hundred?”

Chuck had to laugh as he left. Since Sarah’s orders had been to hurry, he headed to the vending machine right away. He shook his head as he fed the first dollar in. _You tap that_? That was an absurd question. Okay, granted, it wasn’t in this case, since the attendant had actually thought Sarah was a call-girl, but still. Even if he hadn’t been locked away from civilization for five years, he would never have had a chance with somebody like Sarah.

_Just say the word, Chuck._

The first bottle hit the receiving basket at the bottom of the vending machine.

Chuck thought of the security console outside of Sergei Ezersky’s estate again. He fed the second bill in. Sarah’s body, so perfectly aligned to his, so hot and fierce that he was still surprised nothing nearby had spontaneously combusted or at least melted a little bit. The second bottle hit the basket. Why had she done that? It was just…random.

She had cuddled up against him in Poland, though that might have been exhaustion or just a subconscious move toward warmth, as he was sure he was more comfortable than the hayloft floor. But she’d been embarrassed about it upon waking.

She’d joked about visiting the Scary Stacks at Green Library. Granted, that didn’t mean visiting the Scary Stacks with _him_.

A water bottle hit the stack in the receiving basket and bounced against the vending machine glass, making Chuck look down. Why the hell had he put five dollars into the machine, he wondered. While his brain had been playing the “Most Innocuously Confusing Behavior Patterns of Sarah Walker,” his fingers had apparently been busy. Five water bottles stacked up in the basket.

Might as well keep going. Since it was there and he was a little hungry, he moved over to the next vending machine and picked out the Sun Chips Sarah liked, Doritos for himself. Attraction made no sense on either side of the equation, he thought while he debated which items Jill would be able to eat with her jaw aching as it no doubt would. And, oh, God, he wasn’t ready to think about Jill being Fulcrum yet. So he focused on the scarier topic of Sarah. By all rights, Sarah wasn’t his type. Sure, she was so beautiful that even a corpse would react to her, but she just wasn’t a nerd. They had so little in common, and he’d always gone for women that he could talk to for hours, usually about nerdy subjects. Sarah had her moments, but she was only a nerd because she took the time to learn something to—

Impress him.

Chuck’s fingers froze on the “D” key of the machine.

She’d looked up what a Bacta Tank was because he’d made a joke on the plane. She had watched a Bond film solely because he had quoted it. No, Chuck corrected, a little frantic now. She had watched a Bond film that she had hated because he had quoted it. She was always touching his arm, or bringing him food.

“Oh, my God,” Chuck said aloud, nearly dropping his armful of water bottles and snacks.

Sarah _liked_ him.

It wasn’t stress. It had never been stress that made her say, “Just say the word, Chuck.” She’d meant it. And she’d been dropping bigger and bigger hints over the past few weeks to prove it.

She’d dressed up as Tatiana Romanova for Halloween, for crying out loud.

 _Either move, or don’t._ Her words from earlier suddenly made sense, as had her rueful laugh. She hadn’t wanted him to get out of the way. She’d been daring him to make a move. _I should know better by now_.

Oh, God.

How the hell had he missed the signs? Sarah Walker liked him. The only way she could have been more obvious about it, Chuck thought, was if she had rented out an airplane and written it in the sky.

He rested his forehead against the vending machine glass and tried not to freak out.

**25 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**ROOM THIRTEEN**   
**15:07 PST**

Sarah yanked open the door and lowered her gun when she saw that it was just Chuck. She gave him a puzzled look. “Why didn’t you just use your k—oh.”

“Delivery,” Chuck said weakly, his arms full.

“I see.” Sarah stepped to the side to let him in. Chuck glanced over at Jill as he made his way to the bed to drop off the loot from the vending machines. She was still semi-conscious.

“Why are you dripping?” Sarah asked as she tucked her gun away. It was actually her gun, Chuck realized now, which meant she’d gotten it back off of the dead guards. He felt strangely comforted by that fact.

Chuck held up a baggie. “I got ice for Jill’s jaw.”

“Okay…”

“And I stuck my head in the ice machine.”

“That’s sanitary,” Sarah said.

Chuck shrugged.

“Why would you do that, Chuck?”

Chuck sorted through the pile on the mattress and tossed her the bag of Sun Chips. “Remember earlier, when you asked me how much I was freaking out and I said four?”

“And then three,” Sarah said. She tossed the bag on the desk.

“Well, now it’s more like an eight. Or a high seven—no, definitely an eight. Creeping up towards nine, actually.” Chuck knelt next to Jill and put the ice bag against the injured side of her jaw. When she tried to move her head away, he grabbed the other side of her head with his free hand to steady her. “I figured, you know, if I stuck my head in the ice machine, maybe it would stop the freak-out.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t looking at her, but he could practically hear the motion. “And did it?”

Chuck paused. “It works in cartoons,” he pointed out, almost feeble.

“Uh-huh. You know you’re not in a cartoon, right?”

“Which must be why sticking my head in the ice machine did absolutely no good.” Chuck kept his eyes on Jill’s face. He was almost afraid to look at her, to see just how pale she had grown, but he was more afraid of looking at Sarah. Logically, he knew somewhere very, very deep inside that nothing had changed. She must have liked him for a long while, if she was going to dress up as Tatiana Romanova for Halloween.

Maybe he was being vain, and stupid.

He didn’t think so. Things added up a little too well with Sarah’s actions, now that he was really thinking about it. Okay, so maybe he was stupid, but he was hardly vain. He still thought Sarah was crazy for even considering him…in that way. There were many so other better candidates out there for her than some agoraphobic loser with a computer in his head.

“Is Jill really okay?” he asked. “Does it usually take people this long to wake up?”

“She’s semi-conscious, which is a little worrisome, but her pupils are dilating regularly. We’ll give her a couple of minutes.” 

Behind him, Chuck could hear Sarah sifting through the pile on the bed. “Are you okay?” she asked. “I know Jill being Fulcrum is a big deal, and if you think you can’t handle it, or you need to contaminate the ice machine again, you let me know, okay?’

He wanted, desperately, to be reassured the way Sarah had always managed to do even as early as their time on the run through Europe. But it was hard to be calmed by the same woman freaking him out. He kept his eyes on Jill’s face, watching her eyelids twitch. “To be honest,” he said, “I haven’t even gotten to that part. Processing, I mean.”

“Oh. Are you still working on the desert thing? Because they were going to kill us, and I just got to them first. That’s all it was.” A water bottle opened with a hiss behind Chuck.

“It’s not that.” Chuck didn’t dare look at Sarah. He licked his lips, took a deep breath, and found that did absolutely nothing to help his nerves. Another deep breath bolstered him somewhat, and another until: “You meant it, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question, but he looked at her imploringly anyway. “When you said, ‘Just say the word, Chuck.’ You meant that.”

Sarah didn’t so much spit-take so much as she seemed to simply forget drinking. Water dribbled down her chin, making her swear and hurry to stanch the flow with the heel of her hand. Her eyes had gone wide. “Oh, Chuck,” she said, almost a sigh. She set the bottle down on the desk behind Jill, and he could see that her hand was shaking.

It actually made Chuck’s rioting stomach feel somewhat better.

“Of all the times…” Sarah rubbed hard at the back of her neck and cast her eyes to the ceiling. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I make your head hurt, right? That’s what move or don’t move meant.” Chuck slowly set the ice bag down on the desk and rose to his feet. There was only Jill between them now. “I didn’t lie to Jill. You’re very careful about what you say.”

“Yes, I am.” Now Sarah did meet his eyes. “And yes. I meant it. But now is really not the time. Jill’s almost awake and you’ve got to interrogate her.”

An entirely new sort of fear flooded through Chuck now as his brain sped through his own personal horror movie of torture scenes from TV and movies. Suddenly the thought that Sarah might find him—oh, God—attractive or…his brain couldn’t quite go there yet. The thought that Sarah might _like_ him didn’t seem to matter as much as the fact that the woman tied to the chair, the woman who worked for the evil government agency, was his ex-girlfriend. “Me? I’ve got to interrogate her? Why me?”

“Because she won’t tell me anything now.” Sarah leaned over and grabbed a second water bottle from the bed. This one she handed to him. “I’m the other woman.”

“Oh, God.”

“Relax. Nothing’s changed.”

Except everything had. He’d potentially screwed up Operation Prometheus in ways that meant life-changing things, his ex-girlfriend wasn’t just the cold-hearted woman who’d dumped him via Dear John letter but evil to boot, Casey was going to kill him, Ellie was in a safe-house, and Chuck had a hot blonde CIA agent that wanted to jump his bones.

This was one of those situations that led to things like spontaneous cranial combustion.

Because Sarah gave him a significant, almost threatening look, Chuck swallowed the nausea and wiped most of the terrified expression from his face. Two seconds later, Jill blinked awake. He knelt down by her chair while Sarah took up her post at the window behind him.

Her eyelids fluttered as she came to, her skin pale and her look pained. Immediately, her eyes wheeled around the room, obviously taking in details. Agent instincts, Chuck realized with a sickening jolt. Jill had had some sort of training. Her eyes paused on Sarah and finally rested on Chuck.

He opened his mouth to say something—though he had no earthly idea what—but Sarah beat him to the punch. 

“Morning, sunshine. Have a nice nap?”

Realization seemed to come in stages for Jill. Her eyes started to narrow, but the pain must have slammed into her then, given the grimace that swept over her face. She tilted her head a little, possibly trying to assess the damage, air hissing through her teeth.

Chuck had to hand it to her. If it had been him in that chair, he would have been screaming.

Jill’s eyes traveled down to the ripped hotel sheets holding her wrists to the chair and kept going until they landed on the straps binding her ankles as well. Her glare immediately cut up to Sarah. Chuck was positive he had never seen that much hatred in her eyes before.

“What the hell did you do to me?” she demanded, her words a bit slurred through the injured side of her mouth.

“Tied you up.” Sarah turned her attention back out the window, once again keeping watch for Casey. “Nice trick with the phone. You almost had me.” She rolled her eyes.

The venom in Jill’s expression rose to levels that made Chuck’s stomach hurt. Fulcrum, he reminded himself. She worked for the bad guys. Still, he deliberately placed himself between the women. “How’s your jaw?” he asked, since he had no idea how to start an interrogation.

Jill merely transferred the glare to him for the barest of split seconds before it changed to a pleading look. “Why are you letting her do this to me?” She sounded truly pitiful.

“Um, probably because you tried to hit her with a phone.” He hated to point out the obvious, but it felt necessary in this case.

“I was trying to protect myself! She’s a killer—she murdered those agents in the desert this morning, and she’s going to kill you and me the first chance she gets. I recognize her type, Chuck.”

“She might kill you,” Chuck said, reaching up to put the ice bag against Jill’s jaw. She jerked her head away, so he shrugged to himself. He couldn’t really do much in this situation, even if he wanted to. He set the ice bag on the floor, where it would probably leave a mold spot in the carpet someday. Well, another mold spot. “I don’t think she’ll kill me. She likes me.”

And now was really not the time to think about that. His brain was already hurting.

“You can’t trust her!”

“No, it’s you I can’t trust.” Chuck rubbed his hands up and down either wide of his face, very, very tired. Was it really only just after three o’clock in the afternoon? He felt like the day had already stretched on for weeks, possibly months. He focused his gaze back on Jill. “Jill, just stop. I know you’re Fulcrum, okay? I figured it out.”

Jill’s face went through a fascinating myriad of emotion. If he hadn’t been frazzled and tired and confused himself, it might have been interesting to watch hues of dislike, fear, rage, and anger flicker across in quick succession before Jill finally settled on puzzled. “What _happened_ to you, Chuck? You’re not the guy I remember from Stanford.”

“What happened to me is classified,” Chuck said, and nearly blinked at how cold his voice sounded. Even Sarah seemed surprised, given the way she tensed. It was a micro-movement, but he still noticed, so he made an effort to ease his tone back. “And no, I’m not the guy you remember from Stanford. Just like you’re not the girl I knew either. When did you really join Fulcrum?”

“I told you—”

“Lies,” Sarah said.

“I wasn’t lying, I was—”

“Giving a really well-rehearsed cover story.”

Jill glared, flinching when the movement apparently hurt her jaw. “You’re doing really well at this good cop, bad cop routine.”

It was more like weary cop, sarcastic cop, Chuck thought. “If we were cops, maybe,” he said. “But we’re not, and we want to help you, Jill.”

“We do?” Sarah asked.

“Yes. We do.” Chuck turned to give Sarah a _look_. When he turned back to Jill, he’d managed to wipe most of the exhaustion from his expression. “Sarah’s right, you know. Your cover story was a little too set. So I want to know, what’s the real story? What happened to you? The girl I knew at Stanford would never have been a part of anything like this. So what happened?”

For a long, suspended moment, he didn’t think it would work. Jill had always found his babbling cute at Stanford—it was why she had kissed him the first time—but sincerity, genuine truth behind his words had always worked a great deal better. He just tried not to use it unless he really meant it, which might have been stating the obvious, but Chuck felt there was enough of a difference. Even so, five years had passed. He had no idea how much had changed, but given that so far he and Sarah had had to survive being stuffed in a trunk, almost executed in a desert, and being knocked by outdated hotel phones—for Sarah, at least—he’d feel perfectly safe betting that it was a lot.

So when Jill sighed, it was all he could do not to sit back in his seat in surprise.

“I didn’t want them to shoot you,” she said, looking down and away. “I tried to convince them not to, I really did. But they said that too much didn’t match up—the government badges, the fact that you two had two different names on your IDs, and they said you were too much of a risk to Fulcrum.”

“What _is_ Fulcrum?” Chuck asked, deliberately not looking at Sarah. He had a feeling that if he did, she might not be able to hold back whatever hostile comment she had in store for Jill.

Other woman indeed.

When Jill shrugged a shoulder, though, Sarah apparently couldn’t hold it back. She scoffed.

Chuck shot her a look to let her know she wasn’t helping. She rolled her eyes back at him.

“Jill,” Chuck said, turning back to their prisoner, “I don’t know if you realize this here, but you’re in some trouble. My bosses aren’t exactly the most forgiving people on the planet, and they take employee loss very, very seriously. They’re not going to be happy that your friends tried to shoot us.” It sounded like something Sarah would say, but he just barreled on. “And by being a part of Fulcrum, you were committing treason. They throw people in prison for that sort of thing.”

“Maximum security prison,” Sarah felt the need to add.

“But we can help you,” Chuck said. “I know you didn’t want them to shoot us. That’s not you. You’re not that person, right?”

Jill just gave him a sad look. “It’s more complicated than that, Chuck.”

“So you _are_ that person?”

“What? No! I’m not. I didn’t want them to shoot you, but I couldn’t do anything! I didn’t have a choice!”

“You got in the car,” Sarah pointed out.

“I had six armed men telling me what to do!” Jill glared.

Again, Chuck shifted so that he was between the woman. For the first time since they had begun working together, Sarah was being a little less than helpful. Not that he blamed her, really. But he still wanted some answers. “What’s Fulcrum, Jill?”

“I don’t _know_.”

“You mean, you worked for an organization for years and you didn’t even know what they did?” Sarah asked.

Jill glowered at her. Chuck let that one go since it was a fair question, but he cleared his throat, directing Jill’s attention back to him. “Then tell me what you do know,” he said, his voice level and sincere. “I assume you had to start somewhere with Fulcrum. Where was it?”

“Where?”

“Fine. When? When did Fulcrum get to you, Jill? And how?”

“You’re not really helping your case by not answering,” Sarah put in when Jill’s silence stretched out for nearly a minute.

Even though Jill glared, Sarah’s words apparently had effect. “At Stanford,” she said, and sagged back against the chair.

Chuck felt as though somebody had kicked him in the chest. “At _Stanford_?” he yelped, and ignored Sarah’s warning look to drop his voice back down to a lower register. “You mean, you were recruited by an evil organization while we were still together?”

“I didn’t know they were evil,” Jill said, her voice steely. “A family friend approached me about doing some research, and he really did make it sound like Fulcrum would be beneficial to the country. He came to me right before our senior year.” She kept her eyes steady on Chuck, as if imploring him to understand.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. His brain felt like a fuzzy mess. Just before their senior year? He had thought they had been doing so _well_. They had made a pact to make the most of their final year at Stanford, to live it up since they would never have the chance to do so again. And the whole time, Jill had been working for Fulcrum? Granted, he’d been recruited by the CIA, but he had been intending to tell her when he proposed. He had planned to keep that secret for six months at the most. Jill had carried that secret through almost a year in a relationship with him.

It felt very hard to breathe, but he forced oxygen in and out of his chest anyway. Slowly, he leaned forward and shook his head from side to side, as if that would make things better. It really didn’t.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” It came out as a whisper.

Jill shook her head, and there wasn’t anything slow or sluggish about the movement. “It was better that you didn’t know.”

He’d been planning to tell Jill, Chuck thought. The instant he returned from Officer Candidate School, before he shipped off to his first assignment with the CIA. He had been going to tell her he worked for the CIA in some capacity, which he would have been allowed to do at that point. He had been planning to propose to her, and tell her that.

And instead, she wouldn’t have told him. Ever. Even when she—

His head came up. “Is that why you dumped me?”

Jill didn’t look away. “I didn’t want to,” she said, her eyes burning, which was usually a sign that she was near tears. Chuck hoped she didn’t cry. He didn’t want to deal with tears right now, not when it felt like his organs were being slowly sucked out of his chest and squeezed. “I tried so hard not to let them know just how serious the relationship was, but when they found out, they said I had to dump you. They said I couldn’t have any distractions, especially if you were going to work for the government.”

“Work for the—” Oh, right. Jill had thought he was going into the Army to become an engineer for them. Chuck swallowed hard. So that was why. All those years of wondering, and it came down to an organization he hadn’t known existed.

An organization that had managed to change his life in major ways, twice now.

“So you dumped me through a _letter_?” he asked between his teeth, surprising himself. The further shock was that his voice didn’t sound like him. It was frigid, deathly so, and so completely cold.

His hands started to shake. He stared at them.

“I couldn’t do in person.” Now a tear did spill, carefully picking its way down Jill’s cheek. “I tried, I really did. They wanted me to do it while you were home between Basic and Officer Candidate School, and I tried to end things, but I just…I looked at you and I thought, ‘How can I break his heart?’ and I put it off until my bosses said it was either you or…well, I put it off until I couldn’t anymore. If you were going to hate me, you might as well hate me through a letter.”

Jill’s words seemed to fall and echo into a void. Hate her through a letter? They seemed all too real and too hypocritical and too—

Something touched Chuck’s shoulder. He looked away from his hands, confused, to see Sarah standing over him, looking impassively at Jill. “Take up the watch at the window,” Sarah murmured to him, glancing down just once. Even though the look was brief, there was compassion in her eyes. Mechanically, Chuck rose from his spot on the edge of the bed and went to the window.

Sarah took his place. “So,” she said. “Let’s talk about everything you know.”

**25 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**ROOM THIRTEEN**   
**15:52 PST**

“Casey’s here,” Chuck said, dropping the curtain back into place and straightening his shoulders.

“You recognized the Crown Vic?” Sarah asked without taking her eyes off of Jill.

Chuck nodded.

“And he’s alone?”

Another nod.

“Go outside and wait for him, then. I’ll stay in here with the prisoner.”

Jill remained silent. She had stopped crying a few minutes before, when it was obvious that her tears wouldn’t work on Sarah. It had hurt to hear those sniffles coming from his ex-girlfriend, but Chuck had just maintained his stare out the window, as his brain had fought to process everything Jill was confessing. She had been brought into Fulcrum a few months before the CIA had recruited him. They had spent the last few months of their relationship together lying to each other, each thinking that he or she was doing it for the other person.

It made him want to throw up.

Instead, he went outside and stood on the curb, squinting a little in the mid-afternoon sunlight as the Crown Vic trailed dust across the parking lot. Casey’s look was ferocious as he climbed out of the driver’s seat.

“Where’s Walker?”

“In there with J…with the prisoner.” Chuck jerked his head at the motel room.

“She know I’m here?”

Chuck nodded.

“Good.” Casey gave the parking lot a cursory look, pulled off his shades, hooked the earpiece in his shirt collar, and startled Chuck by grabbing the other man by the front of his shirt. He shoved Chuck up against the wall above his head so that Chuck’s chucks dangled a couple of feet above the sidewalk. “Now let’s talk about what the _hell_ you were thinking, Bartowski!”

“Casey, you’re hurting me!”

“Good.” Casey jerked him so that the back of Chuck’s head hit the motel wall. “Maybe something will get through that thick, stupid skull of yours, Bartowski. What the _hell_ were you thinking? You were _stalking_ a Fulcrum agent and you didn’t tell me?”

It was a little hard to breathe, even harder with Casey’s ugly mug glaring into his from so close. “I didn’t know she was a Fulcrum agent!” Chuck protested.

“So you were just stalking some girl that was dumb enough to date your stupid ass? And that’s supposed to make it better?”

Chuck opened his mouth to defend himself, but he didn’t get the chance. The motel room door flew open, and Sarah appeared in full Fury mode, eyes bright, scowl in place, shoulders back. Avenging goddess, Chuck had time to think, though that may have been the lack of oxygen to the brain speaking. Sarah focused all of her annoyance on Casey. “Drop him!”

Casey glared right back. “But he—”

“I don’t _care_! Drop. The. Nerd.”

With a grunt that was more of a displeased whimper, Casey obeyed her orders. Unfortunately for Chuck, it was to the letter. The human Intersect lost his balance and went to a knee in the dirt. He coughed, shoved off Casey’s attempt to haul him to his feet, and brushed the dirt from his knees.

“You always take his side,” Casey muttered, folding his arms over his chest.

“You were choking him up against the wall,” Sarah pointed out, all pragmatism. “And for the record, I’m on your side with this one. What he did was stupid. However, now is not the time. Did you bring the gear?”

Casey grumbled for a minute. “It’s in the trunk. And back-up will be here in a few minutes.”

Sarah blinked at him. “Back-up? Why would we need back-up for a simple prison transport?”

“Nothing’s ever simple when it’s Bartowski.” Casey glared at Chuck as he spoke. He’d already taken the time to don a Kevlar vest with the words “Federal Agent” in bold white on the back, and he had a hip holster for his SIG. When Sarah sighed at him, he shrugged. “And I brought the change of clothes for Bartowski and the prisoner. Had to use some of the stuff from your stores in Castle.”

“It’s fine,” Sarah said, even though Chuck frowned. Sarah was several inches taller than Jill, not that it mattered. Jill was on her way to a secure CIA detention facility, where she would be wearing a gray jumpsuit for the foreseeable future. “Where is it?”

“Backseat.”

“Okay.” Sarah grabbed a brown paper bag out of the backseat, pawed through it, and tossed some articles at Chuck. “You boys wait out here. Handcuffs?”

Casey tossed her a pair. With one more “be nice” look at the both of them, especially Casey, she disappeared back into the motel room.

“You can change out here,” Casey told Chuck. “Save some time.”

Out-outside?”

“What are you worried about, Bartowski? You see anybody else around?”

He had a point, but Chuck still scowled.

“I won’t watch,” Casey grumbled, proving it by turning the other way. “No guarantees that Walker isn’t peeking through the window, though,” he added after a second.

 _Oh, God,_ Chuck thought. He would have never even considered that a possibility, but… _Just say the word, Chuck_.

“I’ll change in the car,” he said.

Casey shrugged: suit yourself.

The fresh clothing made Chuck feel somewhat better, though he would have preferred the chance to shower. He would do that later, he thought, when they reached the safe-house. He would do a lot later when they reached the safe-house. Part of that, he imagined, would involve the freak-out he could feel coming on even now.

When he emerged from the backseat, Casey was leaning against one of the posts holding the overhang up, his sunglasses back in place as he scowled out at the barren desert all around them. “We’re going to have a talk later,” he told Chuck.

“Can’t wait,” Chuck said sourly.

Casey eyed him. “What the hell is up with you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It could be that nothing in my life ever works, that my ex-girlfriend is not only Fulcrum but spent the last year of our relationship lying to me about it, that I seem to be a failure on every level possible, that I suck so much that the government didn’t even want me and threw me away to a bunker in the middle of Siberia. Even on my days off, I manage to screw up even the simplest thing.”

Casey was silent for a moment, though he chewed the corner of his mouth in a contemplative manner. “Huh,” he finally said, and had Chuck looking over. “It’s no fun to put you down when you’re already beating yourself up this much. Get over it so that I can kick your ass with a clear conscience.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” Chuck said sarcastically, feeling bold enough to add an equally sarcastic salute.

“Watch it,” Casey said. “You’re not off the hook with me, even if you’ve got Walker looking out for you.”

“I screwed up,” Chuck said, sitting down on the curb and staring out into the desert just like Casey.

“Yes, you did.”

“I should have just dropped off that letter and left it at that.”

Casey grunted and reached into his pocket, pulling out a cigar. He took his time lighting it. “Uncovered a Fulcrum cell,” he said after a minute, and there was begrudging respect in his voice. When Chuck gave him an amazed look, he scowled. “Not complimenting you, just pointing that out. If you suspected something was off about this character you stupidly robbed, you should have come to Walker and me right away rather than investigating it by your idiot self.”

“Trust me, I learned my lesson there.” Chuck rubbed both hands back and forth over his scalp. “What are the odds?”

“What?”

“The odds. They’re…incredible. What is it, three weeks ago, two weeks ago? Whatever it was, we’re handed this assignment, track down this mysterious government organization that wants the Intersect, and out of all of the people in the world—no, let’s just make that all of the people in Los freaking Angeles—my ex-girlfriend just happens to not only be part of that same organization, but she was recruited over five years ago.” Chuck rubbed his scalp again, this time somewhat frantic. “Forget ‘it’s a small world, after all.’ It’s not a small world. It’s a subatomic world. Damn it!”

Again, another long silence from Casey as he puffed on the cigar. “Maybe you just have bad taste in women, Bartowski.”

Chuck stared at him, baffled, for a full minute before it escaped: a laugh. 

The laugh started from somewhere deep inside, and it wasn’t necessarily borne of humor, but of disbelief, all of the terror he had experience escaping from him like an air-leak in a tire. Like popping the latch on the floodgates, that laugh invited a full fit of snickering, snickering that made his shoulders shake, leading to a gush of mirth until he was practically lying on the sidewalk, his ribs aching while he shook all. 

When Casey hauled him up by one arm and demanded, “What the hell is wrong with you _now_?” Chuck ignored him. It wasn’t funny. He knew that. But something hysterical inside him had snapped, and there was nothing to do but laugh and laugh and laugh.

Casey shook him. Chuck laughed harder. He didn’t hear the motel room door open, but it must have. He heard Sarah’s sigh. “Casey…”

Okay, Chuck thought as giddy mania danced through him, that was a little funny. Sarah was usually long-suffering with him, not Casey.

“What?” Casey half-turned, pulling Chuck with him. Through watery eyes, Chuck managed to make out the forms of Jill and Sarah in the doorway. The hands on the Jill blob were pulled behind her back: the handcuffs. Even laughing as he was, he could still make out the disapproving look on Sarah’s face.

“What did we talk about?” she asked. “Drop him.”

“This one’s not my fault,” Casey argued, as Chuck hiccupped, which only made him start giggling again. “I think there’s something wrong with him.”

Just something? Like it was only one thing instead of millions? Chuck laughed harder until something scratched at the back of his throat, and he began coughing.

“Here, take this, wait inside.” Sarah shoved Jill at Casey and pulled Chuck away. He immediately recoiled and tried to move sideways, only to trip off the edge of the curb and into the parking lot. Sarah grabbed his arms to steady him. He tried to jump backwards. He didn’t want to splatter her with saliva, as the coughs were coming harder now. They ripped through him, nearly tipping him forward. Sarah merely tightened her grip. “And no hitting the prisoner!” she called over Chuck’s shoulder.

The motel room door shut with a slam.

Something in that slam echoed through him. He dropped down to all fours right there, ignoring the squeak of surprise Sarah made at the unceremonious move. Pain as his knees and palms didn’t even register. Nothing seemed to matter but the coughing, great, wracking coughs that made his entire torso heave.

He tried to draw breath, couldn’t. The coughing was just coming too strange, shaking and shocking him. Panic began to scrabble across his skin. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t _breathe_. He tried to suck in oxygen, but the coughs kept coming until he was practically dry heaving. His hands started quivering. A noise like a locomotive filled his head with a powerful roar, warning of oncoming death. Black began to close in at the edges of his vision, making him want to lash out and just try to _stop_ everything…

“I think I’ll go…this May…”

Sarah’s voice cut through the panic, though he had no idea what she was saying. He gasped—and oxygen flooded his lungs. The coughs died down to hiccup-like motions that shook his chest and esophagus. Gradually, air and time chased away the vignette filter over his vision. His heart rate eased, though the overworked organ continued to thud through what felt like a hollowed chest. In fact, all of him felt hollow and empty. With shaky hands, he pushed himself up so that he was no longer on all fours, but rather crouching in the dirt. He blinked, and Sarah’s worried face swam into focus. She grew clearer when he wiped his streaming eyes with the back of his wrist. She crouched in front of him, actual fear across her face.

“Wh-what?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “Did you say something?” 

That worried line between her eyebrows cleared a little. “I said, oh my God, are you okay?” She paused, peering at him for a few more seconds. The fear seemed to be abating, but that could just be Sarah throwing it all behind a mask. “ _Are_ you okay?”

Chuck coughed to clear the last of it from his system. “Yeah,” he said, surprised. Even though he sounded like a frog, he meant it. He mustered up a smile, but it fell short of the mark for humor. Still, it did its job: Sarah gave him a shaky smile back. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it’s okay.” Her movements awkward now, Sarah patted him on the arm. “Wait here.”

He obeyed, dropping onto the curb while Sarah rooted through the backseat of the Crown Vic and came back with two bottles of water from a cooler. She tossed him one, and he drank greedily, the water cutting at the ache at the back of his throat. “Excuse me,” he tried to say—the words came out as a whisper through his abused throat—and made a noise not commonly heard outside horror movies, to clear the rest of the phlegm and panic from his throat.

“It’s a lot to take in,” Sarah said after a few seconds of silence had passed.

Chuck shrugged. The laughter-coughing-panic-attack had sapped him of whatever strength remained. Given the opportunity, he could curl up on the sidewalk and sleep for a few days, maybe even a month. But they still had to deliver Jill to the facility, and get to the safe-house. And there he would face the recriminations of Director Graham and General Beckman, as well as the full brunt of Casey’s wrath. And Sarah’s, too, from the sound of her words to Casey.

“I just need you to hold it together for a little while longer,” Sarah went on.

Chuck nodded.

“Okay. C’mon, let’s get geared up. Do you still have the gun we took off the Fulcrum agents?”

Chuck just hitched up his shirt in the back to show that he did.

“Good.” Sarah held out a hand to pull him to his feet. After eyeing it for a second, he took it, and followed her to the trunk of the Crown Vic. His eyes widened when the trunk opened to reveal a veritable mini-armory, though why he would be surprised by that after a couple of months of knowing Casey, he had no idea.

When Sarah handed him a Kevlar vest that matched Casey’s, he pulled it on. An earpiece and a comm. unit, familiar from their time breaking into Sergei Ezersky’s estate— _don’t think about the security console_ —followed since he no longer had his watch, and they hadn’t recovered that from the Fulcrum agents. When Sarah gestured, he handed her the Fulcrum gun, but she just checked the magazine and handed it back to him. He gave her a questioning look.

“As much as the thought of you with a gun scares Casey,” she said, smiling a little in a way that still fell flat, “it’s policy. We’re officially prisoner transport, which means we’re all to be armed until we hand Jill over.”

Chuck scowled at the gun, but obediently donned the holster Sarah handed him. He had a feeling he would have preferred the under-arm holster, but the Kevlar vest made things a little difficult, so the gun sat on his hip like some foreign attachment. His elbow brushed against it when he took a dark blue cap from Sarah, and he jumped. When Sarah gave him a puzzled glance, he shrugged again and pulled the cap on.

Sarah grabbed a shotgun from the rack on the underside of the trunk lid and cracked it open to check the chamber. Apparently satisfied, she shifted it to her left hand while she loaded ammo into the front pockets of her vest. She sneaked looks at him throughout this whole process, and finally sighed. “Are you really okay?”

Chuck nodded.

“Gonna need actual words, Chuck.”

He unscrewed the bottle of water and finished it before he could answer. “Throat hurts,” he said, his voice mostly a rasp.

“That’s all it is?” Skepticism flavored her expression as she studied him.

Though he knew it was counterproductive, he nodded again. “You said hold off the freak-out, so I’m holding off the freak-out.” And he was doing so, he thought, by thinking of absolutely nothing.

“Oh.” It seemed Sarah didn’t quite know what to make of that. “Okay.” She shrugged, grabbed a couple of spare clips for her S&W, and shoved those into another pocket on the vest. After she shut the trunk, she racked the shotgun.

Okay, that was incredibly hot.

Chuck tried not to think about it. His brain felt a bit like an egg that had already been partially cracked, and if he thought too deeply at Sarah or the fact that she wanted _him_ , of all people— _Just say the word, Chuck_ —egg yolk would probably drip out of his ears.

“Let’s get inside,” Sarah said, but she froze mid-turn.

Confused now, Chuck swiveled to follow her line of sight. Together, they stared out across the parking lot, to the field beyond, to the road beyond that. A convoy of dark cars was heading straight toward the Heartbrake Hotel, an absurd parade in the burning mid-afternoon sunlight, kicking up a flume of dust even more impressive than the trail Casey had left behind. Chuck felt the instinctive jolt of his heart against his ribcage, but he squashed it.

“Back-up?” he asked Sarah. “Casey said they were a few minutes behind him.”

“The timing works out,” Sarah agreed, but she handed him the shotgun to hold while she popped the trunk again and half-disappeared inside. She emerged holding a sniper-rifle scope. After a few seconds of peering through it, she lowered the scope. She didn’t say a word as she turned and grabbed a second shotgun from the rack, and then a third.

“Sarah?” Chuck asked as Sarah shoved both of those guns under one arm and grabbed a box of ammo. “What’s going on?”

She slammed the trunk lid. “Get inside. We’ve got company.”


	34. Trouble Strikes Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t panic. — _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_

**25 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**HEARTBRAKE HOTEL ROOM THIRTEEN**   
**16:12 PST**

Casey and Jill both looked up as Sarah, juggling a shotgun, an FGM-172 SRAW, and Chuck, pushed the door to the motel room open. Jill’s eyes widened; Casey looked vaguely impressed. “What’s up?” he asked, rising to his feet from the desk chair.

“Team Bartowski’s got company.” Sarah handed him the rocket-launcher on the way by and dumped the rest of the loot on the bed, out of Jill’s reach.

“Ours?”

“Not unless the Marshals are issuing Uzis.” Sarah yanked on Chuck’s sleeve to pull him over to the bed. He went. It wasn’t that he was scared speechless, even though there was a healthy amount of fear pumping through his veins. He suspected it had more to do with the fact that there were only so many hits his system could take before he wanted to lie down on the ground and start gibbering like a madman. Since that would do absolutely no good, he just did as he was told. In this situation, it meant loading shotguns while Casey called for backup and Sarah peered out the window through the sniper scope. His hands didn’t even shake as he shoved shells into the chamber of the gun.

“What’s going on?” Jill asked, the words a little slurred through her injured jaw. She’d changed into fresh clothing, Sarah’s clothes hanging off of her petite frame a little bit.

Sarah didn’t look at her. “Your friends are here,” she said.

“They look real friendly, too,” Casey said, moving the curtain an inch to peer out the window. He hung up the phone and picked up the rocket-launcher. “Backup’s seven minutes out. I told them to step on it. Any idea how they found us?”

“No, and right now I don’t care.”

Chuck finished loading the first shotgun and set it on the stripped mattress, out of Jill’s reach. She was handcuffed, and maneuvering a shotgun with her wrists bound would be difficult, but her confession still sat heavy on his mind.

Casey checked over the rocket-launcher. “I’ll need a spotter,” he said, begrudgingly. “Walker?”

“Got it. I need a minute.” 

“They’ll be in range in ninety seconds.”

“Which is, amazingly, more than a minute.” Sarah grabbed a shotgun even as she pulled Chuck away from both Casey and Jill. In an undertone, she asked, “Are you okay?”

Chuck forced his head to move up and down in what might have passed for a nod.

“Okay.” Sarah took a deep breath, and inexplicably, an impish smirk broke out over her face. She didn’t look like there was a legion of enemies—enemies carrying Uzis—racing at their dingy motel room. She looked like a woman sharing an amusing secret. “You owe me a dollar.”

“Wh-what?” 

“You said you’d give me a dollar if I used ‘Team Bartowski’ in front of Casey,” Sarah said, as Chuck gaped at her. “Which I just did. So, pay up.”

“N-now?” How could she smile like that? They were likely about to die in a horrible, bullet-ridden way in a motel in need of a serious roach-bombing.

“Yes, now.” Sarah’s eyebrows went up.

“Uh, okay.” Chuck fumbled for his pocket, where he had the rest of the money Sarah had given him for the vending machine earlier. His hand came up empty. Puzzled, he switched pockets. “I, uh, seem to have—oh. Figures.”

Sarah unfolded the wad of bills she’d lifted from Chuck’s pocket. “What’s the matter, Chuck?”

“Thief,” Chuck grumbled.

“You don’t have any singles,” Sarah said. She plucked a five from the stack.

“Hey!”

“What? Interest.” Sarah gave him an impertinent look as she stuffed the bill in her jeans pocket. Abruptly, her expression turned serious. She pushed the shotgun toward him. “Ever fire one of these?”

“Not counting ‘Resident Evil,’ no, but I’ve got it.” Chuck took the gun and racked it. 

“Okay. It’s a last resort and a last resort only, got it?”

“Okay,” Chuck said, his voice surprisingly steady given that he was now armed with two guns, and freaking out.

“Get Jill to the back of the room, and stay down,” Sarah said. She pushed something into his hand: a handcuffs key.

“Walker,” Casey barked, sounding more impatient than usual.

“Go on,” Sarah told Chuck, grabbing the other shotguns from the bed. She took her place at the window, peering through the sniper scope. Chuck, meanwhile, swallowed hard before he grabbed Jill’s elbow to pull her to her feet. As he led her to the back of the hotel room, he could feel the tremors up and down her arm, and he more than understood.

But he couldn’t find it within himself to offer reassurances.

He pulled her down so that they crouched between the bed and the bathroom. “Sarah says we have to stay down,” he said unnecessarily, since Jill had always had good hearing.

“And we have to do what she says?” Malice burned across Jill’s face.

Chuck let her have that one, since Sarah _had_ clocked her. He shrugged and set the shotgun behind him, out of her reach. “She’s the trained agent here, and I’m fond of, you know, having a life.”

“I won’t have a life after this,” Jill said.

“But you’ll be alive to not have that life. Hold still.” Even without shaking hands, it was hard to work the key and unlock the handcuffs. Since he wasn’t sure what he should do with them, he stuck the cuffs in his back pocket and picked up the shotgun again. Surprisingly, it didn’t feel exhaustingly heavy like the other guns he had handled. He kept his finger off of the trigger and tilted the muzzle toward the floor just like Casey’s lessons had taught him. As he did so, his thumb brushed against the knife Sarah had tossed him for ripping up sheets. He hadn’t had the chance to return it, so he had stuck it into his belt buckle.

He could only hope it didn’t somehow work its way loose and stab him in the stomach. That would _really_ put a cap on today’s activities.

By the window and the door, Sarah and Casey were holding a hushed conversation, Sarah still peering through the scope. “Twenty seconds,” Sarah said. Without lowering the scope, she grabbed the doorknob with her free hand. “Fourth quadrant, thirty two degrees. Ten seconds.”

“Okay.”

Chuck crouched forward. It seemed a little excessive, he thought. Fulcrum was sending an entire convoy to deal with two, maybe three agents of an unknown agency? Talk about overkill.

Maybe Fulcrum wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

Sarah threw open the door. Casey stepped into the open space, took a split second to aim—

BOOM.

A shockwave of heat and sound slammed into Chuck, knocking him back as Casey hit the trigger. Chuck grabbed the underside of the bed frame to steady himself and prayed.

The explosion made the ground dance. The shock jolted through him, making him curl forward. At the door, Casey tossed away the launcher, caught the shotgun Sarah threw his way, and took aim. The gun barked once, twice, three times. Though Chuck longed to clap his hands over his ears, he stayed rigid, his body twitching in time to the gunfire.

Casey fired a fourth time, swore, and dove to the side. He hit the ground with a laugh and a roll. “Jackpot, suckers!”

Sarah slammed the door. A volley of gunfire rattled the walls nanoseconds before holes appeared in the front wall, sprinting along in a demented race. Chuck immediately dropped to his stomach and curled up around the gun almost like a shrimp. Uzis, he remembered. The bad guys had Uzis, and they were using them to chew the walls to literal shreds. Splinters rained down into the hotel room like demented snow.

Though terror whitened his vision at the edges, he risked a look at Jill. Like him, she’d hit the floor, but he could see her face, colorless save her eyes, which were wider than he had ever seen them. They were almost black. He didn’t give her a reassuring smile. They were probably going to die.

“Overkill much?” he called over the com when yet another torrent bit into the walls.

“They’re preparing for an assault! Just keep your head down.”

That didn’t make him feel better, but Chuck could see the value in Sarah’s order. He tucked his head close to the floor even as he crawled sideways, using his arms to pull him across the carpet. Around the edge of the bed, he could see Casey and Sarah. They were both flat on the floor, facing each other and they seemed to be communicating in hand signals. Even as he wondered what they were saying, Chuck’s brain translated.

_Five seconds._

_You take lead._

_High or low?_

_Low._

A nod. _I’ll take high. Three, two._

_One._

As one, Casey and Sarah surged to their knees in the middle of the broken glass, guns ready. Chuck gaped as they took opposite sides of the window, firing into the bright daylight. Each round seemed louder than the Fulcrum gunfire, more commanding and powerful.

Outside, somebody screamed. 

Direct hit.

Casey and Sarah dropped in unison. Chuck flinched, hoping the Kevlar was enough to protect them from glass shards. They didn’t bother with hand signals this time. “How many?” Casey shouted over the com.

“Six on my side.”

“Seven on mine. Hell. I got one. Make it six.”

“I clipped one.”

“Eleven and a half against us, Bartowski, and the prisoner?” Casey laughed. “Piece of cake.”

Another volley of shots riddled the walls. Given that these weren’t staccato and one on top of the other like the first few rounds, Chuck figured somewhere in the rational part of his mind that they had switched from the Uzis to pistols.

Still as deadly, Chuck told himself.

“I’m winning.” Casey sounded smug.

Sarah propped the shotgun against the wall, grabbed her S&W, and checked the chamber. “I clipped one.”

“Doesn’t count.”

“Loser buys everybody dinner?”

“You’re on.”

It was at that point that Chuck realized he wasn’t the only one on the team with mental problems. Especially since Casey let out a belly laugh as he charged the window. Sarah rolled gracefully onto her knees, like a lethal dancer. The gun jerked in her hand, controlled motions like Casey preached to Chuck during their shooting lessons. She fired off rounds for what felt like forever, and dropped to the floor, safe.

Chuck let out the breath he had been holding.

“ETA on backup?” she called. Shots ripped into the room sporadically, no longer steadily destructive like the Uzis. Of course, all one had to do was go through one of the holes already present, hit a vital organ, change Chuck’s life forever…

His grip tightened on the shotgun.

Casey opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say anything, a new round of percussion shook the motel, sounding both farther away and still all too near. Casey’s mouth snapped shut. He nodded once. “About damn time.”

“What was that?” Chuck demanded. Though he expected his voice to rise and fall due to panic, it was surprisingly steady.

Sarah turned her head and glanced his way. The look was fleeting, split-second at most, but it packed all of the punch of a thousand-second stare: worry turning to relief when she saw him unharmed, a little fear, reassurance, respect, even a little fun.

Of course, Sarah would be the type to find amusement in a gun battle. She liked _him_ , after all. Clearly, Sarah Walker and sanity weren’t as close friends as he had thought. And oh geez, if they survived today, he was going to have to reevaluate everything having to do with women.

“Backup’s here,” she said over the com, turning back to look at Casey. “Time to move?”

“Grab the kid and go.”

“Kid?” Chuck said, offended.

Neither of his partners answered. Casey took a knee and began firing Sarah’s discarded shotgun out the window. Sarah, meanwhile, ran back toward Chuck and Jill at a crouch. 

Chuck immediately grabbed her wrist and yanked her behind the bed and out of the line of danger, onto the floor with him and Jill. She yelped as she landed. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he shouted, forgetting he had the earpiece in.

She winced at the volume, but glared. “No, I’m trying to get us out of here safely. We’re getting mobile now that backup’s here.”

“What?” Chuck blinked as Sarah reached down and pulled something off of his vest: one of the grenades. She tossed this to Casey, who caught it easily. “How? I feel like this is pointing out the obvious, but they’re shooting at the door!”

“Which is why we’re going out the bathroom window. C’mon.”

“What if the Fulcrum guys are already out there?”

“Then I shoot them. Move.” Sarah reached around Chuck to grab Jill’s arm, but the Fulcrum woman shook her off. Sarah shrugged: suit yourself. “Chuck, go first, get the window open, and get down.”

“Okay.” Chuck glanced once more at Casey, who was still laying down a round of cover fire, and crawled toward the bathroom, flinching with every new shot. When he scurried into the bathroom, he cringed for an entirely new reason: he was positive the floors hadn’t been cleaned since the days of the Reagan administration. “Gross, gross, gross.”

He hopped up and tried to pry on the pebbled-glass window. It didn’t budge. 

“Get the window open, she says,” he grumbled under his breath, hauling on the window with his free hand. It was more than painted shut. The damned thing felt like somebody had used iron rivets to bolt it to the frame. “Sure, like it’s easy.” 

He set the shotgun down so that he would have both hands free—and froze. Get the window open, she’d said. She hadn’t said how, and with the amount of bullets turning the Heartbrake Hotel to splinters, what did one broken window matter? Before Chuck could talk himself out of it, he snatched up the shotgun and swung. Cracks shot across the glass, but it didn’t break. Frustrated, Chuck hit the glass again. A couple of cracks joined the first.

He set the shotgun down, balanced his palms on the sink, and kicked up with both feet.

The window exploded outwards. Sarah and Jill crawled into the doorway right as Chuck’s chucks hit the grimy bathroom tiles. Sarah’s eyebrows went up. “You got it?”

“Yep.” Chuck used the shotgun to chip away the jagged shards of glass still in the window while Sarah grabbed the thin motel towels from over the toilet. She threw these over the bottom of the window.

“You first, Chuck. Go straight to the van, and get down.”

Chuck, about to quip about ladies first, saw the look on Sarah’s face. He hurriedly shut his mouth and nodded. Though Sarah offered him help up, Chuck just handed her the shotgun and pulled his weight through the window on his own. He caught the shotgun as Sarah tossed it to him and raced for the car.

Jill came through the window next, this time with Sarah’s help. Instead of diving into the van and following Sarah’s orders to the letter, Chuck took a knee and raised the shotgun, staring hard into the distance. He wasn’t sure he could shoot a Fulcrum agent, even if they were going to shoot him, but he could fire in that direction and make them go for cover. He could buy Sarah and Casey time to get in the van. 

Another _boom_ shook the ground, much quieter than the rocket-launcher. Chuck winced and looked over; smoke curled over the top of the motel from the other side.

Casey had thrown the smoker.

Definitely time to go.

Chuck turned to look at Sarah, who was halfway out the window, but gunshots, much closer than those currently turning the front of the Heartbrake Hotel into a cheese-grater, made him drop to the ground.

The window frame inches from Sarah’s left hand exploded in a fountain of splinters. She dropped back into the bathroom.

Chuck was on his feet with no idea how he got there. “Sarah!”

“Chuck, RUN!”

He might have disobeyed, except as he turned to sprint back to the motel, holes thudded into the van where his head had been. He didn’t even stare. He just grabbed Jill’s hand and hauled. He sprinted along the back of the hotel, feet miraculously dodging the ancient carpet of faded beer cans and other debris. Behind him, Jill stumbled, but Chuck just continued to race forward. He could still hear gunshots, and they sounded too close, even though Sarah was no doubt laying down a round of cover fire to help them get away.

A shot missed him by inches, shattering a window.

Chuck pushed his legs faster.

Bullets smacked into the walls of the hotel room.

Holy crap. They were going to die. He couldn’t see where the shooter was, had no idea what direction the bullets were coming from. All he knew was that there would be no more Chuck Bartowski after that. Just like there would probably be no more John Casey, or Jill Roberts, or Sarah Walker.

His hands shook.

He risked a glance over his shoulder, saw Sarah drop from the window fifty yards behind them. She raced forward at a crouch, gun up and pointed at a shooter Chuck couldn’t see. He sprinted harder for the motel office. If he could just get inside, there would be cover, and maybe they weren’t all dead. Sarah would take care of the problem and—

A bullet smacked into the window so close behind Chuck, he almost felt it tear the air between him and Jill.

FWOOSH.

Chuck’s entire world exploded. He went from a dead run to flying through the air, the ground gone, the sky gone, gravity completely out of the question. For one perfect moment, he was suspended, a wall of heat at his back and nothing but an abyss in front of him waiting to be explored.

He landed and almost-forgotten Army training sent him into a roll, tucked around the shotgun. The jolt slammed all sensation back into him. Dust spewed everywhere, filling his mouth and eyes with grit even as his tumble wound up with him on his butt, facing away from where he’d seen Sarah seconds before. He coughed, unable to see, his ears ringing from the sheer rush of sound. His skin felt stiff and raw, like he’d been tossed into the desert with no cover and no sunscreen. He tried to stand, and the world, just a bright blur of whites and yellows, tilted dangerously.

He swiped at his eyes with his sleeve and the world grew a little less blurry. Other details filtered in: heat against his skin, no longer a blast but a slow, steady pressure making everything uncomfortable, the cough of gunfire that sounded incredibly distant, the crackle of something, a noise video games and the movie _Firestarter_ would never let him forget.

The hotel had exploded. Maybe not the whole hotel, but _something_ had definitely blown up.

Chuck’s vision cleared enough and he turned his head to stare. He’d been thrown clear of the explosion by the first percussive wave, as far as he could tell, but debris from the explosion scattered across the parking lot like buckshot. 

“ _Chuck_!”

Sarah’s voice sounded tinny, like it was coming to him through a tunnel from a long way away. Confused, he turned his head, but he couldn’t see her through the smoke. “S-Sarah?” Her name came out as a cough, and barely audible, even though he was sure he’d talked at a regular volume.

There was a pause before she answered. Her voice was coming through his earpiece, Chuck remembered. That was why he couldn’t see her. Well, he couldn’t see anything, really. “Thank God! Are you okay?”

Chuck coughed hard, the smoke and dust and grit coating his lungs with their own version of fire. “I’m fine,” he managed. “Where are you?”

“I’m—”

Abruptly, the gunshots stopped sounding far away.

“Run!” Sarah shouted needlessly.

Still coughing, Chuck scrambled to his feet, dropping the shotgun in the process. He didn’t bother to pick it up, but instead sprinted away from the site of the explosion. He got three steps before he stumbled over something: Jill.

She’d been thrown farther than him, and she evidently hadn’t had the chance to roll on impact. When Chuck tripped over her, she grunted, and rolled over.

There was a crack in the left lens of her glasses.

“Chuck?” She blinked up at him.

He didn’t have time to explain, not with people still firing at them. As carefully as he could, considering the situation, he reached down and pulled Jill to her feet. “We’ve got to move, c’mon.”

He pulled her, stumbling and running, his eyes still ringing and his eyes blurry, toward the office. If they could get inside, he thought again, there would be cover. Places to hide. Somewhere to curl up into as small a ball as possible and just _hide_ until all of this terrible, terrible nightmare just faded.

“What the _hell_ are you doing out there, Walker?” Casey’s voice, like Sarah’s, sounded distant over the earpiece. “I didn’t bring anything fun enough to cause that sort of blast with me!”

“It wasn’t me!”

Chuck hurdled the curb and hit the back door to the office at a run. “Meth lab!” he yelped, remembering an errant thought from earlier. He yanked Jill inside with him. “They must’ve hit it when they were shooting at Jill and me.”

There was a pause. More gunfire erupted. “How the hell did you know there was a meth lab?”

“Because it went boom! Quick, hide.” The last, Chuck said to Jill. They’d entered a kitchenette that hadn’t been cleaned in this century, but at least there were no holes in the walls to show that Fulcrum had arrived before them. Jill raced on through a hallway. Chuck caught flashes of rooms as they ran: a pantry used for storing towels, a laundry room. They burst into the main office, and immediately had to dive for the floor. The windows here were smashed, the walls Swiss cheese. Chuck could see rays of sunlight stand out in the room’s natural dust.

He crawled over to the front desk and found the unfortunate desk worker cowered there. The man yelped at seeing Chuck, until Chuck put a finger to his lips and crawled over. He couldn’t be worried about things like unpleasant body odor right now.

“You okay?” Chuck asked.

The desk worker nodded. His face was the color of bone.

“You’re not hit anywhere?”

A shake of the head.

“Good.” Chuck rubbed a hand over his face, wishing that his ears would stop ringing. He had to get this guy to safety, as the worker was an innocent bystander. Right now, however, safety was in scarce supply. He glanced around, but Jill had taken the only other hiding place, behind filing cabinets that bore bullet holes just like everything else in the Heartbrake Hotel.

“What the _hell_ is going on?” the worker hissed, apparently finding his voice.

“Trust me, that’s way above your pay grade. There’s a laundry room back there, right?”

A hurried nod. The worker swiped at the sweat on his upper lip with the back of his hand.

“Okay. Does it have a lock on it? Yeah? Good. Go back there, lock yourself in, and hide. Stay down. I don’t know if they’re shooting in here anymore, but let’s not risk anything, okay?”

“Who are you talking to?” Casey demanded. He sounded like he was running.

“Desk worker. Jill and I are in the office,” Chuck said. When said worker gave him a strange look, he waved the other man off to the closet.

The clerk got all the way to the end of the desk, toward the hallway, before he turned and gave Chuck a panicked look. “Just out of curiosity,” he said, “but what the hell kind of hookers are you buyin’, man?”

“Do yourself a favor,” Chuck said. “If you see the blonde? Don’t call her a hooker. She’s armed. Go!”

Casey’s laughter burst out over the com, followed by some swearing as yet more gunfire ensued. Did Fulcrum just have endless wells of bullets? Sarah sounded less than amused. “The blonde?” she asked. “ _Hooker_?”

Chuck winced.

Casey put a stop to Chuck’s apparent doom. “What’s your twenty, Walker?”

“Trying to get to Chuck, but I’m pinned down. Two shooters. You?”

“Same. I’m outside room seven in front.”

“Does anybody else feel like we’re two seconds from Abraham Lincoln showing up with a machete?” Chuck wondered.

“Chuck, keep your head down, got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Chuck said, even going so far to give a mock salute, though he knew Casey couldn’t see him. He ignored Casey’s grunt and crawled toward the end of the desk to look at Jill. Though she was hidden from most of the room, his vantage point let him see her clearly. She curled forward, her face still white beneath the grit and soot from the explosion.

She was the enemy. These were her people that were shooting at them. All of them, Chuck remembered. They’d shot at Jill, too. 

She looked as scared and as exhausted as he felt.

“Are you okay?” Chuck mouthed at her.

She shook her head and curled closer to the floor. Chuck debated briefly if he should go over to offer reassurances—what he would say, he had no idea, as Jill was Fulcrum and therefore a traitor, and she would be facing the consequences soon if they survived—but before he could move, both of them heard the heavy tread of a man’s step in the hallway.

Everything inside Chuck went still.

It was Casey, he told himself, even while his mind rejected that logic. Casey would have announced himself. Casey would have come in through the front door. It wasn’t Casey.

Maybe it was another one of the good guys. Maybe it was the mysterious backup that had been shelling the motel to pieces.

“Agent Sandstorm?” an unfamiliar voice called.

Chuck had precisely two seconds to wonder why the agent would be calling him that when his name was obviously Stargazer before the flash hit.

A sand dune in the middle of a blue-sky desert.

SANDSTORM.

IDENTITY: JILL ROBERTS.

Scrambled computer code.

The dune again.

“Oh, crap,” Chuck whispered.

Jill really was Fulcrum. Hearing her confession to Sarah, her apologies to him, details of how she worked, none of that had hit home. But now…Chuck swallowed hard. His hand shook as he unsnapped the holster holding the stolen Fulcrum pistol.

Before he could pull the gun out, though, Jill climbed to her feet. “Leader?” she called, sounding genuinely relieved. “Leader, is that you?”

The man in the hallway, still out of Chuck’s sight, paused. “Roberts?”

“In here!” Though Chuck put up a hand to stop her, Jill ignored him and stepped out into the main part of the room. “I’m so glad that you’re—”

The gunshot was so much closer than those outside. Even with his ears possibly damaged for forever, it sounded unbelievably loud, like somebody had just fired a gun right next to his head. Chuck jerked backward, his hand automatically flexing on the hilt of his gun. 

Jill fell in impossibly slow motion. Unlike the movies, it wasn’t graceful. She just went from standing to collapsing inward like a building that had been demolished. There was absolutely no sound as her body hit the ground.

She looked like a corpse.

Chuck’s breath caught in his chest. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. He didn’t blink. Jill was dead.

“You caused a lot of trouble, Agent Sandstorm,” the voice from the hallway said, and Chuck’s mind translated the words through the fuzz of shock. “My sincerest apologies. You could have been one of the best, but now…”

The man stepped into the room. Chuck slowly, slowly turned his head to stare at expensive boots. The man was four feet away, but he hadn’t looked around. He was huge. Casey-sized at least, broad-shouldered, dressed in black leather and black pants that couldn’t have screamed his villainous intentions any louder had they tried. Bald as Captain Picard.

He was also holding a very, very big gun.

Oh crap.

It wasn’t actually that big. It was a handgun, probably the brother or sister to the gun Chuck now held in his own hand. But that gun had killed Chuck’s ex-girlfriend.

She lay on the floor, dead. Living—not living, dead—proof.

Except she coughed. 

Chuck’s head cut to the left. Dead people didn’t cough. That wasn’t one of the many traits of _Rigor Mortis_. Neither did they writhe about, nor did they stare up at their shooter with disbelief borne of betrayal.

“Now,” the man with the gun went on, “it simply means I have a mess to clean up. Fulcrum thanks you for your services.”

He pointed the gun right at Jill’s head.

In that moment, Jill Roberts was no longer an ex-girlfriend. She was no longer a traitor, or the reason he and Sarah had been taken out to the middle of the desert and nearly killed that morning. She hadn’t dumped him in a letter two weeks after promising to visit him during a free weekend of OCS. She hadn’t gone on hour-long raids in _Everquest_ with him and Morgan and Bryce. She was just a woman, bleeding on the floor, and she was about to be shot in the head right in front of him.

Something roared through Chuck, shouted out of him, and he hit so-called Leader from the side with a body-slam that had more power than finesse. Leader went flying. Chuck stumbled forward, nearly tripping over the front of his feet, but kept his balance.

Leader hit the ground hard enough to shake the walls. He rolled, one easy, streamlined motion, and gained his feet.

It occurred to Chuck then that he had no plan.

“Chuck? What’s going on?” Sarah’s voice, in his ear, panicked.

Chuck ignored her. “Don’t move!” he said, and belatedly remembered the gun in his hand. Miraculously, he hadn’t dropped it, though it jittered when he pointed it at Leader. “Stay right where you are!”

“Bartowski, what the hell is going on?”

Leader took a half-step forward. Chuck’s hand abruptly stopped moving. “I said _don’t move_!” He turned his head slightly, but kept his eyes on Leader’s brutish face. “Jill? Jill, are you okay? Can you hear me? Jill?”

She whimpered.

“Chuck, what’s happening?” Sarah again.

Chuck turned his gaze back to Leader, swallowing hard. “Some Fulcrum guy shot Jill. I’ve—I’ve got him at gunpoint.”

“ _What_?”

“I—”

“Walker,” Casey interrupted. “I’m still pinned.”

“Yeah, I got it, Casey!” More gunfire from behind the hotel, this time faster and harder. “Keep your gun on him, Chuck! I’ll be there in a second.” 

The com went silent.

Chuck swallowed again, his eyes never leaving Leader, who hadn’t moved. He _had_ started smirking, though, behind silly-looking sunglasses with yellow lenses. “Who are you?” Leader sounded both condescending and smug.

“It doesn’t matter.” Abruptly, Chuck remembered the handcuffs he’d stuffed into his back pocket. He used the gun to gesture from Leader to the floor, his left hand sliding into his pocket. It should have felt like a video game or a movie, pointing a gun at somebody, but there was too much nausea boiling through his system for that. “Get on the ground now. First, drop the gun. Away from you. Drop the gun away from you.”

“You’re not going to shoot me.” Leader didn’t move.

Though it made him literally want to vomit, Chuck thumbed the safety off.

Leader’s eyebrows went up. His movements slow, careful, and deliberately condescending, he stepped forward and made a show of tossing the gun from his right hand down the hallway to his left, his arm sweeping across his body.

“Good,” Chuck said. “Now—”

Leader’s arm chopped into Chuck’s hand, sending the gun flying over Jill’s prone body. Pain smashed through Chuck’s hand.

Chuck didn’t get a chance to cry out. Leader whipped forward, his left arm striking out. His palm slammed into Chuck’s hip. Chuck crashed backward and bounced into the bullet-shredded wall, the Kevlar padding his shoulder-blades. It still hurt.

He only had time to blink before Leader seized him by the straps of the vest, yanking his torso forward. His head jerked forward. Leader’s knee hit him squarely in the middle of the vest, in the fleshy part beneath his sternum. The knee-strike rattled through him, pain rupturing through his chest. All of the air left his lungs in a _whoosh_.

Leader grabbed Chuck’s knee, his other hand still gripping the vest. There was a lurch and Chuck was flying through the air. He had a split-second of complete clarity in which every detail in the room stood out perfectly. It was almost serene, even though the décor was still uglier than sin, the walls bore a few new holes, and Jill’s blood was seeping across the grimy carpet in a scarily spreading pool. He could see dust motes drifting on the air, wafting along gently. He flew through the air like Superman, and it was almost fun.

Until he hit the ground.

He landed on his palms and knees, like he’d just decided to fly across the room and do a push-up. Pain erupted. Automatically, he lowered toward the disgusting shag carpet, just as automatically pushed back up, even while his hands and knees screamed.

Leader stepped on his back. Chuck’s stomach hit the ground, and he grunted. Something pushed against his belly. His belt buckle? Blindly, he groped for it. He had no idea what he was doing, why he was here, what was going on. Leader stepped over him and picked up the gun he’d knocked from Chuck’s grip.

Without any prompting whatsoever, he pointed it at the CIA agent.

Oh, God, Chuck thought for the millionth time that day. I’m going to die. This really is it.

He worked the object digging into his stomach free.

“Good-bye,” Leader said, pointing the gun at Chuck’s forehead. If Chuck imagined it, he could feel the laser sight searing into the skin between his eyes like a brand.

He did the only thing he could. He threw whatever it was that was in his hand at Leader. He threw it hard.

There was a _thunk_.

The gun went off.


	35. A Farewell to Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it. — _George Santayana_

**25 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**HEARTBRAKE HOTEL OFFICE**   
**16:25 PST**

Chuck waited for a heavenly chorus to start.

He waited for an old woman to shout at him to run away from the light.

Hell, he even waited for Mario and Luigi to pop up and inform him that, yes, there was a heaven, and it had every gaming console known to mankind, and in heaven’s version, Aeris didn’t have to die.

None of that happened.

His ears ringing, Chuck cracked open one eye, and then the other. There was no fountain of blood spewing up from the center of his chest, and even though his head felt as though somebody had slammed a door on it a few times, it still felt whole.

What the hell?

If he had somehow died and passed onto the afterlife, he wanted to go back to the last save point, as the afterlife looked suspiciously like the lobby/office of the Heartbrake Hotel. He could smell the funk of the shag carpet, just inches away from his nose, and it _reeked_. Even worse, Leader had evidently followed him from the mortal realms into this one, wherever it was.

Oh, shit.

Chuck rolled onto his back and scuttled backward, like a crab. Leader stood in exactly the same place. This wasn’t heaven, or hell. This was the Heartbrake Hotel still, and oh, God.

As Chuck watched, Leader raised the gun again, ready to fire. Chuck continued to scramble. That gun barrel loomed, unrealistically huge, more like a cannon than a pistol. He’d survived by miraculous odds once today, and Chuck didn’t think he had another round left in him, Kevlar vest or no.

But Leader didn’t shoot.

Leader dropped to his knees.

What the _hell_? Chuck stared in shock as the Fulcrum agent’s gun hand lowered to the carpet, as if he had just lost all of the energy or will to live. The other man’s face became a mask of shock, twisted grotesquely by fear. Chuck felt his own breath, already racing alongside his pulse, start to come faster, in pants and gasps. What was happening? Why hadn’t the man killed him?

Why wasn’t he _dead_?

It soon became clear. Leader’s hand set the gun down on the carpet and, shaking, traveled up until it rested on his abdomen, to the left. Now, and only now, Chuck noticed the spreading stain, inky against the black T-shirt.

Leader yanked on something, grunting. He held it up to the light, and Chuck saw blood drip from one of the throwing knives Sarah always carried.

Chuck’s hand flew to his own abdomen. The knife Sarah had tossed to him earlier, the one he’d used to tear up the sheets, was gone. His gaze traveled from his empty belt buckle to the weapon clutched in Leader’s hand, and just like that, he understood.

Holy shit.

Leader curled forward, the knife hand dropping to the ugly carpet. He coughed, and blood spattered everywhere, even onto the white toes of Chuck’s sneakers.

Chuck had thrown that knife.

He’d done that.

Leader’s hand shook and picked up the gun. He started to lift it.

“ _Freeze_!” Sarah burst into the room through the hallway, gun up, dirt-smudged, wild-eyed. She had always seemed like some vengeful guardian, always looking out for him, always protecting him from the world, from the bad guys, even from himself.

There was nothing she could do now.

Leader reared back in surprise, baring the stain on his shirt, the one spilling down onto his black jeans, to the world. Chuck saw Sarah’s eyes take in the stain, take in the gun, the knife. He saw her eyes cut to him, understanding far too quickly. She turned back to face Leader.

When her gun barked once, Chuck flinched. The second time, he flinched again.

The third time, he didn’t move. He couldn’t.

Leader slumped to the carpet. He lay there face-first and Chuck stared at him, at the knife, until Sarah knelt between them. Then all he saw was her worried face. 

“Chuck? Chuck, talk to me.” Her voice came to him through a tunnel.

He shook his head. He’d thrown that knife.

“Chuck! Chuck, please, are you okay?” 

Something pinched his arm just above the elbow. “Ow.”

“Chuck! Are you hurt?”

Everything hurt. Chuck gave Sarah an odd look. Why was she worried about that when he had killed somebody? His hands had taken a life. He had thrown a knife, a knife that would have ended Leader’s life. Even now, around Sarah, he could see the blood spreading, a dark badge on the carpet.

“Chuck,” Sarah said again, and grabbed his chin. “Hey. Stay with me now. I need to know if you’re hurt.”

He wished she’d leave him alone. “I’m fine,” he said, a bit waspish. “I’m fine, but—Jill!”

Ignoring Sarah, he turned and half-scrambled, half-crawled to where the Fulcrum agent had fallen. She had tried to pull herself away, toward the front of the room. How she expected to get away in that condition, Chuck had no idea. But she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t fully conscious, but she wasn’t dead.

He pushed against the wound in her side. So much blood, was all he could think. She’d lost so much blood just like Leader had, and now he was dead and soon she would be too. Her face had gone beyond pale, dark circles shouting like signs from under her eyes, and her jaw was clenched, even as her eyes fluttered like she was in the middle of a REM cycle. Chuck put his palm against the gunshot wound and pressed while Sarah called into the comm unit for Casey to call the EMTs and get a medkit into the office as soon as he subdued the shooters out front.

He didn’t hear Casey’s reply. 

“Chuck.” A hand pressed on his shoulder. At some point, Sarah had run back to the storage closet and she had come back with a load of motel towels. They were scratchy and off-white, but they would have to do. Sarah nudged Chuck to the side, a knife in her hand. For one terrified moment, Chuck thought she might end Jill then and there, a mercy kill, but that was ridiculous. Sarah merely cut Jill’s shirt away from the wound so that she could get a better look. She made a “hmm” noise and pushed a towel into Chuck’s hands. “Put this over the wound and push down, okay?”

He did so.

“Can you handle it? I need to…” Sarah, her hands bright red with Jill’s blood, gestured toward the front window with her gun.

Chuck nodded and didn’t look away from Jill. She had lost so much blood, he thought. Even now, more was pouring out of her, even though it had become a sluggish trickle rather than a gush. 

A strand of hair fell into Jill’s eyes. Even though she had them closed, Chuck reached over with a shaking hand and pushed it away.

His fingertips left a bloody streak on her forehead, and he looked up and over at the fallen body of Leader.

**25 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**HEARTBRAKE HOTEL PARKING LOT**   
**19:21 PST**

“Bartow—Chuck.” Casey’s voice, oddly gentle, broke through the haze that had descended over Chuck’s vision, and he looked up. The other man stood, still in the dusty clothes from the fight, just behind the ambulance. Like always, he stood with one hand on his belt buckle, the other hand ready to go for his gun, but he looked exhausted.

They had given Chuck new clothes. Black sweatpants and an T-shirt, since his clothes had been covered in Jill’s blood, and torn to pieces from everything that had happened during the gunfight and the meth lab explosion. Since the water at the Heartbrake Hotel no longer worked, Sarah had snagged a few water bottles from one of the emergency relief vehicles, and she had helped him sponge off the worst of the blood and dust. It should have made him nervous, knowing what Sarah thought of him, but she had been clinical and silent the whole time, simply helping him rinse off. When he’d finished, she’d stripped down to her underwear and had done the same thing for herself, only Chuck had held the water bottles this time while she had scrubbed, and she hadn’t even seemed bothered when Chuck hadn’t reacted. They were both dressed in borrowed clothes now. The crime scene clean-up team would probably incinerate everything they had been wearing during the fight.

And now Casey stood in front of him, waiting for some kind of response.

“What?” Chuck asked, blinking back to the present.

Casey looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Have you eaten anything?”

“What?”

“C’mon.” Casey hesitated, but reached down and grabbed Chuck’s elbow. He hauled Chuck to his feet and began to pull. “Walker told me to make sure you got some of the pizza the crews brought. We’re leaving for DC in a few minutes.”

Chuck stumbled to a stop. “DC?”

“Yeah, the bosses want you on lock-down until we figure out the extent of the damage. C’mon.” Casey jerked his head and tugged.

The parking lot of the Heartbrake Hotel had become a small village of emergency vehicles and scene clean-up. One group had even pitched a tent in the corner and had set up water bottles and other provisions to be handed out to the workers scurrying around, hurrying to clean up the obliterated motel. Thanks to Casey, Sarah, and the backup team, all of the Fulcrum agents had been either killed or subdued, and those that had survived were now in custody, on their way to be interrogated. The clerk had similarly been carted off, possibly to have his memories altered. Not that he was unfamiliar with that, as that had evidently been his meth lab that had been blown to smithereens by Fulcrum, but still, when feeling returned, Chuck would feel bad for the guy.

Jill had been taken away in a screaming ambulance. Chuck had overheard the EMTs say it would be a miracle if she survived the trip to the hospital.

Sarah had called the ER later.

Jill had survived the trip to the hospital.

“Here.” Casey shoved a flimsy paper plate holding an equally flimsy slice of pizza into his hands.

Chuck bit in. He didn’t taste anything. “Where’s Sarah?” he asked.

“Overseeing clean-up. Eat your pizza, and you can go see her.” Casey said it like he was offering dessert to a child if he ate all of his vegetables. Chuck knew he should have protested, that the words had been spoken to get a rise out of him.

He didn’t. He couldn’t think.

He knew it was only a matter of time until he had to think, but until that moment, he couldn’t—he wouldn’t—think about Leader, wouldn’t remember the way blood had dripped past the knife handle. The shock and fear and terror on a hardened bad guy’s face, and all of it caused by something Chuck had done.

He couldn’t think about it.

“Hey.” Casey nudged him. “Eat something before Walker gets on my case.”

Chuck looked down and realized he still had most of the piece of pizza in his hand. Because it was there and he didn’t have a better idea, he took a bite, and followed it with a second. He still couldn’t taste a thing. His body had stopped talking to him. Sure, his chest throbbed, and his right hand hurt, and he felt oddly sunburned, and his ears probably wouldn’t stop ringing for days, if ever. But he had just stopped caring.

He finished the pizza because Casey had told him to. When he finished, he put the paper plate in the garbage bag tied to the tent pole and looked around the parking lot, watching the crews clean up the foam they’d used to put out the fire from the meth lab explosion. Would somebody with a wrecking ball come during the night? Would the badger-chewed sign be all that remained of the Heartbrake Hotel?

Maybe it was fitting.

One of the clean-up crew trotted up and flagged down Casey. “Go find Wal—Sarah. Stay on the scene, and don’t get into trouble,” Casey said.

Chuck obeyed. He wandered through the miniature, impromptu village, trying to stay out of the way as best he could. The crew had been briefed that he was an FBI agent of some type who had been on scene, and they had been instructed not to talk to him. Even so, Chuck received a few nods, some of them sympathetic. He had no idea why people were looking at him like that, but he didn’t really care.

He looked in room thirteen first, but there was no sign of the sunny blonde hair in the bullet-scarred hellhole. Chuck stared at the snacks he’d brought from the vending machine, still on top of the stripped mattress before he wandered on. His path took him the route Casey must have run to get to the office building, skirting wide around the doomed room eight, which was nothing but a charred, foam-covered skeleton now. 

They were likely all getting a contact high from what was left over. He should probably worry about that. Maybe later.

He followed his chucks into the office, and paused in the doorway.

Even with the borrowed clothes draping over her frame, Sarah was easily recognizable. Her hair flared like a flame in the high-watt crime scene lights posted in the hotel lobby. She was kneeling on the ground, facing away from him and touching something in the carpet, an island of stillness even while crime scene techs moved around her. Her shoulders were wound so tight that he could almost count each individual muscle even through the T-shirt.

She looked lonely.

Chuck’s gaze wandered from her to the dark patch in the carpet. Leader’s blood. The patch to Sarah’s right was Jill’s blood.

He stuck his hands in the pockets of the sweatpants and cleared his throat.

Sarah’s hearing hadn’t been compromised by the explosion earlier. She heard him; he saw her shoulders tighten even further. She tried to smile at him, but her eyes were too bright. They gave her away.

Chuck crossed the room and crouched next to her. Up close, he could see what she had been staring at.

“It missed me,” he said.

She didn’t look at him. “By how much?” 

Chuck almost shrugged, but thought better of it. He’d seen Sarah swipe at her eyes, and even if he couldn’t think through the haze making everything disconnected in his head, he remembered her confession. And her challenge. _Just say the word, Chuck_. “By enough,” he said, and deliberately put his foot over the bullet hole in the floor. His head had been two inches away.

She didn’t need to know that.

He looked at the stain a few feet away. Somebody had put a numerical marker next to it, as well as a ruler. For later reference, Chuck figured, if somebody was ever allowed to review the photographs of the carnage that had gone down today.

Sarah followed his gaze. “Talk to me, Chuck.”

Talk to me, Chuck. Tell me how you feel.

Chuck didn’t feel anything but the throbbing ache that had become his body. He barely heard anything; his skin was stiff and lifeless. And emotion seemed to be something that belonged to others, whereas his brain existed in nothingness, or at least a dense fog.

“I killed a man today,” he said.

“No.” Sarah startled him by grabbing his arm, and her grip actually hurt, outward pain versus what he had sustained during the fight. “No, you didn’t, Chuck.”

“I threw a knife at him.”

“He was pointing a gun at you.”

“Even so. I must have hit his liver, right? For him to bleed out that fast. That’s what Casey says. Group your shots center mass, or aim for the head or liver. And I hit his liver.” 

“You didn’t kill him,” Sarah said, her grip tightening. “I fired the killshot, not you. Got it? You didn’t kill him. I did.”

“I hit his liver.”

“The autopsy report is going to say that what killed him were the three bullets to center mass,” Sarah said, pulling on Chuck’s arm until he was facing her rather than the bloodstain. Mercifully, she loosened her grip, and circulation returned to his arm. “That is the official and actual cause of death. Not the knife.”

“But if you hadn’t—”

“But I did.”

“But if you _hadn’t_ —”

“Chuck.” Sarah put her hand on his other arm, and her skin was like ice. Her hand was also trembling a little, Chuck realized. “You can’t do this. You’ll go crazy, playing ‘what if,’ and ‘what if that hadn’t happened?’ You have to accept that what happened, happened. Otherwise…” She looked down at the toe of his shoe, and swallowed hard. “Just don’t dwell on it.”

Chuck said nothing.

After a minute, Sarah let his arms go and patted him on the knee. She’d done so a million times, probably, in their short time together in Burbank, and even once when she had visited him in the bunker. It should have felt familiar.

Chuck felt nothing.

“Why don’t you go outside and wait for me?” Sarah said. “I need to clear one thing, and we can leave. Just go outside and stay there. Can you do that for me?”

Chuck nodded.

“Good.”

When Sarah rose to her feet, he did the same. When Sarah turned to talk to the person in charge of the crime scene, Chuck drifted more than walked out of the room. He paused at the threshold, but it was only out of habit. Fearing the open space, the amount of people, the amount of danger and possibility like he always did just seemed…disconnected. It required too much.

In the back of his mind, he wondered if he was going crazy. He figured he wasn’t, since he was wondering. He stared out into the mini-village, watching the crew of faces and hands and government uniforms all milling about. There was an order there. People listening to people with clipboards, people working and conferring. They looked like ants.

The Heartbrake Hotel would be a ghost town come morning.

Leader was already a ghost.

Chuck had killed a man.

How was he supposed to feel about that? He was supposed to feel…something. But there was nothing but a fog where his mind had been, a void where everything he was supposed to feel rested. 

If he squinted hard enough, he imagined, he would probably be able to see after-images of the unholy battle that had taken place. He could probably see Casey run along under that overhang there, gun in hand as he fought to get to him. He’d probably be able to see room eight explode out in a fiery mess of splinters and flame and narcotic gasses.

He could see nothing but a clean-up crew that would soon, too, be gone.

If he turned, he might see Jill’s body crash to the ground. She had left something real behind, possibly lifeblood, but he would possibly watch an image of her, startled at the betrayal, face screwed up in agony. He would see Sarah’s gun go off three times, protecting him from himself even then. Or he would see her now, her physical body and not just an image, in quiet conversation with the supervisor, ensuring that he got his story absolutely right in the reports. Still protecting Chuck.

He didn’t want to see any of this.

An unmarked black SUV pulled up and men in G-man suits climbed out, another mass of government employees that would all tell lies about what had happened here, to clean up the mess. Chuck watched them flash badges at the people in charge, and head right into the crime scene, passing him by without a second look.

Like he was the one who was a ghost here, not Leader. Not Jill.

Chuck wished he felt something about either of them, but he didn’t.

He had killed a man.

He felt nothing.

He had to get away from the ghosts and this ghost town to be.

Without a word to anybody, without looking at Casey or Sarah or even anybody else in this small army of his would-be protectors, he crossed the parking lot to the SUV that had just pulled up. He climbed into the driver’s seat. The car was still warm from the heater on the trip over to the motel. Somebody had left the keys in the ignition. Chuck turned them, didn’t look back at the crime scene.

He drove away.


	36. The Canyon is Not Enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence. — _T. S. Eliot_

# PART IV: MENOETIUS

**26 NOVEMBER 2007**  
 **GRAND CANYON, YAVAPAI POINT**  
 **07:02 MST**

Over the past hour, the edges of the sky had slowly, subtly taken on various shades of first a lighter purple, blending easily into pinks and blushes that signaled the oncoming sunrise. It was almost like watching the sun melt from the sky, but in reverse. After the snowstorm the day before, a snowstorm that had ripped briefly through Colorado, lost steam through Utah, and finally peppered down across northern Arizona, Chuck hadn’t been sure he would actually see the sun rise this morning. Clearly, he wasn’t the only one that had wondered, as there was not another soul at the outlook to watch the world light up. Everybody else was still in bed, he figured, probably snuggled up warm, while he sat in the couple of inches of snow at the outlook and watched the sun rise.

He didn’t mind the solitude. People made things tricky.

In some corner of his mind, he could hear Ellie’s voice, nagging at him to get inside, to go get out of the cold before he caught his death of fever or the flu or various other ailments. The coat that had luckily been stashed in the back of the FBI SUV he’d taken from the Heartbrake Hotel wasn’t nearly warm enough to hold off the elements, especially not with the biting wind.

He’d spent five years in Siberia, always frozen. In a way, feeling that again, after the warmth of Burbank and southern California, was comforting. He kept his hands tucked in the jacket pockets since he didn’t want to lose fingers to frostbite. Toes were a little less important, and he’d stopped feeling them ten minutes after stepping from the stolen—borrowed, he reminded himself. He was going to return it—car so it wasn’t like they mattered much to him one way or the other.

What was he _doing_? He was agoraphobic, and he had a life and people that loved him, so why the hell was he out here, all alone, with all of this space around him, and nobody to protect him?

Chuck pushed the questions away and climbed to his feet. Yavapai Point Outlook, one of the few he could park by and hike to without worrying about a shuttle bus, faced east, so he would get to see the sun’s virgin rays strike the canyon that spread out majestically below him.

He had never been to the Grand Canyon before. He and Ellie had tried to talk their dad into taking them as kids, but he had always been so busy, so wrapped up with his work. He’d said, “Next year” until they had learned to stop asking, that “Next year” would never come.

One more thing to cross off his list, Chuck thought. Sarah and Casey were going to murder him. Casey would do so overtly, possibly choking him to death, while Sarah…after her first angry outburst, she would say something encouraging and supportive, but her eyes would clearly broadcast her unhappiness and distress.

He wasn’t looking forward to either reaction. Neither of them, he knew, would quite understand that he had needed to get away, to _think_ and do nothing but think and evaluate and compare and contrast, all of those things he had forcibly stopped himself from doing ever since he entered that line of Zork text and Sarah had shown up in the bunker. 

And now, here he was, at the Grand Canyon, of all places. He wished Ellie was there, even while he dreaded seeing her again, knowing that she would well and truly flip her lid. Hurricane Ellie left very few survivors. But still, Ellie would have liked to see sunrise at the Grand Canyon. 

He didn’t even have a camera to take pictures and show her later, once her wrath burned down to embers. All he had was a borrowed laptop that had run out of juice after he’d sent a short email, the jacket on his back, a borrowed car with its emergency food-stash, and a five dollar bill, all that was left of the money Sarah had handed him to go get change at the Heartbrake Hotel. It was almost peaceful, being without a cell phone, even while it was terrifying.

Chuck wasn’t sure why he heard the rustling on the trail behind him, given that he was fairly positive most of his hearing hadn’t returned, but he turned his head nonetheless, curious as to who else would be out on this windswept outlook in the bitter dawn cold. Certainly somebody better prepared than he was, given that his jacket provided very little warmth in the overall scheme of things.

When the gun came down the path before the person holding it, he yelped and immediately threw his hands in the air. “Federal agent! Don’t shoot!”

The gun lowered. Belatedly, he realized it was a very familiar Smith & Wesson 5906, instants before the white face behind said gun confirmed the identity of his visitor. He froze. He hadn’t expected Sarah and Casey to show up for at least a couple of more hours, but now it was clearly time to face the firing squad.

Sarah, still on the path down from the Rim Walk, didn’t move, save to lower the gun limply to her side. She seemed absolutely stunned to see him. “Chuck?” she asked, and her voice sounded strange, like she hadn’t used it in a while.

Chuck winced. “Um, hi.”

Now, he thought, was the part where she tried to kill him for directly disobeying orders and vanishing off the face of the earth and stalking his ex-girlfriend and nearly getting them killed several times and lifting a stranger’s cell phone, and about a million other misdeeds. She would remember the gun in her hand at any second and simply shoot him, making her life ten thousand times easier, so she could jet-set off to go murder prime ministers with eating utensils and…

Sarah dropped the gun. Chuck watched it fall in absurdly slow motion, watched the silver catch glints of the early morning sun as it tumbled the couple of feet between Sarah’s limp hand and the snow.

It hit the snow without a sound. Chuck only had time to blink before Sarah herself seemed to collapse just like the gun had, only this time it wasn’t in slow-motion. Sarah’s knees hit the ground and she crumpled forward, her shoulders already beginning to shake. If Chuck moved, he didn’t remember. One second, he was up against the rails, the next, he had vaulted over the rise that split the middle of the lookout point into two tiers. “Sarah! Oh crap, are you okay? Oh, crap, crap.” Had she been hit? Was she shot? Injured? Dying? What the hell had happened after he’d left? He tried to grab her shoulder, to see where she had been shot.

Sarah’s hand, ice-cold, grabbed his wrist, and he half-expected to go flying. Instead, she yanked, and he went forward onto his knees. Before he could react, she had burrowed against him, wrapped her arms around his middle, and just _clung_.

It took Chuck’s foggy brain a second to catch up. Sarah Walker wasn’t injured.

She was crying.

Oh, hell.

**26 NOVEMBER 2007**  
 **GRAND CANYON, YAVAPAI POINT**  
 **07:23 MST**

It took a long time for the sobs to break down to tears, which eventually became sniffles. Chuck knew to the second just how much time elapsed because he spent that time crouching in the snow, counting every damned second while his brain tried to scrabble for an explanation, any explanation as to why Sarah would be bawling. She didn’t seem willing to help him much, either. He’d tried to make sure everybody was okay, but she had just tightened her grip and cried into his shirt.

If he had to rank it, this moment would probably be in his top ten scariest scenarios. It would have been just in the top twenty, but he could officially knock “being near a meth lab when it explodes” off the list, since he’d survived that. And it was, in hindsight, far less frightening than having his tough-as-nails, can-handle-anything, super-secret-CIA-agent of a partner literally break down in his arms.

But now, nearly twenty minutes—each of them a dragging, doubtful eternity in its own—later, the sobs were gone. She was barely even sniffling anymore.

Finally, she unlatched one of her arms from around his torso and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Chuck didn’t point out that it was essentially a useless gesture, since his shirtfront was pretty much soaked through. He blamed it on being too petrified to speak.

But he cleared his throat. “Let’s try that again. Um, hi.”

Her shoulders shook. Though Chuck tensed, this time it was a humorless laugh as Sarah rubbed the base of her thumb under both eyes. “Hi,” she said, and her voice sounded rusty. She didn’t look up at him.

Since he figured it was safe to actually move, Chuck eased one leg down so that he was sitting rather than crouching, as he’d stopped feeling his legs sometime before. Though it was frigidly cold, and he only had now-soaked sweatpants to protect his legs, it had the added benefit of putting him on eye-level with Sarah. She shifted so that she was burrowed into him again, as she didn’t seem to want to let him go, even though she picked her gun up out of the snow and put it away.

Body heat, Chuck figured. It was freezing.

It was probably a stupid question, but he had to ask it. “Are you okay?”

Sarah, her head now against his shoulder, nodded.

“Are you, um, sure? Because…” Chuck waved a hand at the front of his shirt, not really sure if he should actually use the words “crying” and “Sarah” in the same sentence. It felt like it was breaking some sort of…spy code.

“I’m fine,” Sarah said, and now her voice sounded testy. “I’m more worried about you. You’re okay? You’re not hurt, are you?”

Well, he was achy, remnants from the fight at the Heartbrake Hotel, and she had pushed up against the bruise on his chest for twenty minutes straight, but Chuck didn’t feel it was important. “I’m not hurt,” he said. “I’m okay.”

“Good. Then…” Sarah didn’t give him any warning at all. She just slammed her free fist into his shoulder with all the force she could muster.

Since Sarah regularly put pro wrestlers to shame, it wasn’t surprising that Chuck’s shoulder nearly exploded with pain. He yelped. “Ow! What the _hell_ , woman?!”

Sarah lifted her face and glared. With the tear tracks still very prominent, and her eyes scarily blue from the crying, the glare was even more frightening than usual. “You deserved that,” she said, and wiped angrily at her nose. “Don’t you ever, _ever_ do that to me again, do you understand me? _Ever_.”

Chuck tried to pull away to massage his sore shoulder, but Sarah was not interested in letting go. “Ouch,” he said, grumbling.

“Promise me,” Sarah said.

“Sarah—”

“Promise. Me.”

“Okay! I promise. Just don’t hit me again! Sheesh.” 

In yet another lightning-quick change of temper, Sarah burrowed against his side. “Good,” she said, and let out a long, shaky breath.

Chuck, by now, had learned to be on his toes. He tried to twist to where he could see her face, but Sarah hung on like a barnacle, her face pushed into his now-throbbing shoulder. He would have shrugged, but that would have just hurt worse.

So instead he cleared his throat. “Where’s Casey? He’s not waiting in the car to shoot me, is he?”

“Burbank.” The word was slightly muffled against Chuck’s shoulder. “He’s bringing Ellie and Awesome out to DC later.”

He had completely forgotten about DC, even though he remembered Casey mentioning it now. His stomach pitched a little bit. Going to DC meant facing the big bosses, and it was scarily close to Langley, where he and Sarah had been kept in the detention facility.

They could lock him up again.

“Oh,” he said, and kept his voice even. “We’re still going to DC?”

Sarah nodded against his shoulder again. “My job is to get you on a plane today.”

Chuck swallowed. “Will you at least be on the plane, too?”

“After the stunt you pulled? You’ll be lucky if I let you go to the bathroom on your own. I need to know some things.” Sarah pushed herself away from Chuck. With the sun well on its way into the sky, he could see that her face was red, either from the cold or the crying jag. Her breath flumed around her face, water vapor vanishing into the air. And her eyes were still impossibly blue. She also looked, Chuck thought, exhausted, her skin drawn and tight. 

Like she hadn’t slept for a couple of days.

The guilt bubbling in his gut threatened to boil over.

“What _happened_?” Sarah asked. “I turned my back on you for one second, and then I came out and you were just…gone.”

Chuck turned back to the canyon, wishing he could focus on how the sunlight hit the strata, bringing out the deep jeweled tones of the desert. “I don’t know what happened,” he said without looking at Sarah. “I don’t…I don’t remember a lot. I remember seeing Leader stand over me, and he had a gun in his hand, and I remember…” He swallowed hard again, but barreled on, well aware that Sarah was watching him carefully. “I remember the knife, and how you shot him so that I wouldn’t be the one to kill him, and I remember trying to save Jill.”

Sarah was silent for a moment. “She made it,” she said.

Relief did very little to alleviate the pressure the guilt was building behind Chuck’s sternum. “Good,” he said, but it sounded dull in his ears.

Sarah squinted at him. “She’s going to be fine. It’ll take some time, the bullet did quite a bit of damage, but there’s something of a happy ending for her, especially since she’s already come to and is willing to tell us everything she knows about Fulcrum.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t seem very happy about that.”

Chuck picked up a bit of snow and played it between his fingers, watching the falling pieces create near-invisible indents in the ground. “She got shot because of me.”

“She got shot because Leader shot her, not because of you.”

“She got shot,” Chuck said, his voice deceptively quiet, “because I was stalking her and I stupidly thought maybe she was in trouble. Well, she was, but not until I came along. Just like you were nearly killed, by Matching Pocket Square or Lawrence or whatever his name was, and you and Casey and Jill were nearly blown up. All because I couldn’t be normal enough to not stalk my ex-girlfriend.”

Next to him, Sarah put her palms together and laid the side of her index fingers against her nose, almost like a prayer. She blew out a gusty breath. “I should never have gotten on your case about the stalking.”

Chuck goggled at her. “That’s seriously all you have to say to that?”

“Well, it’s the truth. We’ve all expected too much of you too, way too fast.” Sarah hugged her knees to her chest and sighed before she rested her cheek on her knee, her head pointed toward him. “Chuck, if the worst thing you do is sit in your car and make sure your ex-girlfriend is safe in her apartment after five years away from society, then…well, we’re probably lucky, considering.”

“Even though it blew up horribly in our faces?”

“Even then.” Sarah turned her attention toward the canyon, just like Chuck had. “And to top it off, the whole…Jill thing was like lighting a match and throwing it into a tub of napalm that we thought was water.”

“That’s an apt description.”

“There was no way to know it would turn out like it did. Even so.” This time, when Sarah punched him, she didn’t use all of her force. But she hit him in exactly the same spot.

“Hey!”

“You still should’ve brought that cell phone to Casey and me.”

Chuck rubbed his shoulder. “At least hit a different place next time.”

“No promises.” Sarah wrapped her arm around her knees again and sighed. “I was jealous.”

Chuck’s head swiveled. “What?”

Sarah glared at him. “Don’t make me repeat it. That’s why I got on your case about the stalking.”

“Oh.” Chuck mirrored Sarah’s pose, though he didn’t curl up into a ball. He rested his forearms on the tops of his knees. Given everything he had discovered about Sarah, all of her crazy antics and the things she did that had made absolutely no sense, it shouldn’t have surprised him that she could be jealous over Jill. But he figured the day Sarah stopped surprising him would be a long way away, if ever. “Sarah, about that…”

“About what?”

“About you _like_ liking me—”

Sarah’s eyebrows went up. “When did we go back to middle school?”

“You know what I mean.” Chuck licked his lips, wincing when he realized how chapped they were from the cold, but thankfully Sarah somehow missed the move. “You liking me. When…when the hell did that start? And _why_?”

The last thing he expected was for a slow smile to overtake Sarah’s face, even while she leaned against her knee, looking up at him. “That’s easy to answer. I think you’re neat.” 

He had to have heard wrong. “Neat?”

“Yup.”

He hunched his shoulders forward. “Gee. Thanks for making me feel like I’m eight.”

“Trust me, Chuck.” Sarah leaned toward him a little, her smile just slightly wicked. “You don’t look eight.”

Chuck felt the flush start at his collarbone and rise. 

Sarah’s expression sobered. “And you still haven’t told me what happened to you after I turned my back on you at the motel. It took us a little while to put it together that you took Agent Sanderson’s car, but I still can’t figure out why. Why didn’t you come to me or Casey? We could have helped.” She looked around. “And why _here_?”

“I don’t know, and trust me, I’ve been asking myself the same thing.”

Instantly, concern sprang up. Didn’t she get tired, Chuck wondered, jumping around the emotional spectrum like that? “Are you handling it okay?”

“What? The space? Yeah, it’s fine. I’m not thinking about it. I promised myself I’ll freak out later.” Chuck waved his hand vaguely toward the canyon. “And it’s worth it, I think, for the view.”

Sarah’s eyebrows went up.

“I don’t know what happened,” Chuck repeated, and rubbed the back of his neck, something he did when uncomfortable. “I think I was just standing outside the office, and I couldn’t feel anything, you know? I’d just killed Leader—”

“ _I_ killed Leader.”

“Okay, fine. _I’d_ just stabbed a man, and I’d tried to stop my ex-girlfriend from bleeding to death on the skuzziest carpet on the planet, and I…didn’t feel anything. At all. And I was looking at all of the people who were wandering around and how they were just so…blasé about cleaning it up. And I didn’t want to be there…so I wasn’t.”

“But, taking federal property from a crime scene, Chuck?” Sarah asked. “Why do that? Why not just sit in the Crown Vic and close your eyes?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking. And believe me, when I figured it out that I had taken some stranger’s car, I about had a freak-out on the spot.” Chuck scrubbed both hands over his hair and left them on the back of his neck, his elbows still on his knees. “I kept it really clean and I didn’t crash it anywhere, I swear. It’s just like I found it, except the gas tank is almost empty, and I may have disabled the GPS tracker on it, but I don’t remember. I’m pretty sure I can turn it back on.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “I’m not worried about the car. I’m just trying to understand. Why didn’t you _call_?”

“I wanted to think.”

“You can think in Burbank.”

“But I wasn’t in Burbank, and I was already gone, and what does it even matter?” 

“It matters because I had no idea where the hell you were! I thought Fulcrum had broken into the crime scene and taken you.” Sarah abruptly dropped her knees, sliding down to the bottom tier, where she could pace, her boots leaving prints in the snow. She didn’t pace far, just a few steps away, before she stopped and put her hands on her hips, looking out into the canyon. Her shoulders were tight again. “I didn’t know where you were, and it scared me. You can’t do that.”

“I’ve already promised you I wouldn’t.”

“No, I mean, you _can’t_ do that, Chuck.” Sarah whirled to face him. “You’re the Intersect, okay? That means you literally cannot pull another stunt like this. They will throw you into protective custody so fast—”

Chuck scowled, the thought of protective custody automatically shooting a dart of fear through him. “And what do you call having to stay within twenty miles of you and Casey at all times?”

“A compromise.” Sarah’s eyes narrowed. With her hands on her hips, she looked like Wonder Woman, but Chuck figured she didn’t know that. There were vital differences, of course. Diana Prince could look angry, but she would never match Sarah’s pissed off expression for sheer vehemence. “Have you been struggling with that, Chuck? Was that what the disappearing act was about?”

Chuck’s face set mutinously. “I wanted to think.”

“And you can’t think within twenty miles of me?”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“Twenty miles is a lot of space, Chuck.”

Chuck’s aggravation deepened to a scowl. “Are you freaking out on me because your boyfriend didn’t call in, or because Agent Walker lost the Intersect?”

“Where the hell does it say I can’t do both?” Sarah glared right back. “Also, why does it matter which version of me is worried? _I_ was worried. _You_ vanished. You, Chuck, the Intersect, Agent Bartowski, whatever the hell hat you want to wear right now, you were _gone_ , okay? And God, this makes us both sound like we have multiple personality disorder.” Sarah threw up her hands and turned away.

“I’ve wondered.” 

“And I take back what I said about you not being eight,” Sarah muttered, mostly under her breath, but Chuck still heard it.

He opened his mouth to refute the point, but stopped. A half-laugh, nothing humorous in the noise escaped him, making Sarah half-turn to give him a “What the hell?” look. Warily, he climbed off of the second tier, down to join her by the railing. Sarah watched him just as warily, her eyes guarded.

“We’re starting over,” Chuck said.

“What?”

“You just came down to the Canyon and found me, you’re relieved I’m okay, and I’ve promised never to do that again. This time, I won’t be an idiot. Okay, go.” Expectantly, Chuck held his arms out.

Sarah eyed him for nearly a full thirty seconds before the smallest smile cracked through. “You’re nuts.”

“Clearly.” Chuck raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry I scared you, Sarah.”

Sarah heaved a gusty sigh before she moved to hug him, and jumped back almost immediately. “Holy sh—Chuck, you’re like ice!”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. You could have mentioned you were dying of hypothermia!”

Chuck rolled his eyes. “I’m hardly _dying_ of hypothermia. Don’t you think you’re being a little melodramatic?”

“You’re like a Chuck-shaped block of ice.” Sarah stepped closer to rub his arms through the jacket, though she herself wasn’t wearing anything heavier than a thick sweater. “You should have said something!”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, you’re scruffy and you’re freezing. C’mon, we’re going back to the car. Have you even eaten anything since the last time I saw you?”

Chuck shuffled his feet. “I had a burger.”

“When?”

“Yesterday?”

Sarah rolled her eyes and grabbed Chuck’s hand to haul him up to the path and back to the parking lot. “We can continue this conversation in the car. With the heater going. Full-blast.”

“Sure, but…” Chuck dug his feet in and gave Sarah his best wheedling smile when she turned to give him a confused look. “Can we at least get a picture first?”

She paused. “A picture.”

“Yes.”

“Of?”

“Us? We’re at the Grand Canyon. You’ve got your phone on you, don’t you? It’s got a camera.”

Immediately, something akin to panic crossed Sarah’s face. “Chuck, no.”

“C’mon.” Chuck threw his free hand out to include the entire, rather spectacular view next to them. “Look at us. We’re at the _Grand_ _Canyon_ , Sarah. We need a picture, to commemorate that. Just one.”

“Chuck, I just spent, like, half an hour bawling. I’m in no state to take a picture!”

“Then I’ll take it. My arms are longer, anyway.” Chuck held his hand out for the phone.

Sarah gave him the “not happening” stare. “My nose is red.”

“So is mine. It’s cold. C’mon. Just one.” 

“Seriously, did you not see how I broke down in tears for like, over half an hour?”

“Kind of hard to miss. And it’s not like you have anything to worry about. You’re beautiful. You always are. Now, the phone? Or do I have to pickpocket you?”

“As if you could,” Sarah muttered, but she couldn’t quite hide the smile as she dug into her pocket for her phone.

“I don’t know. I had a good teacher.”

“Not _that_ good.” Sarah handed over the phone.

It took Chuck a couple of tries to get the picture just right, with Sarah protesting the entire time. She liked the version where he accidentally cut her out completely, but he just kept his arm around her shoulders until he got the cropping right. She could have ninja-fu’d her way out of said hold, which told him she was indulging his whim. It was smarter not to say anything, though, so he didn’t.

“You have to send me this picture when I get a new phone,” he said, following her up the path to the parking lot. He was grateful to be getting back to warmth and to stop turning into, as Sarah coined it under her breath during the picture, a “Chucksicle.” 

“Send it yourself. Your new phone and your wallet and your new watch,” and at this Sarah sent a pointed look over her shoulder, and Chuck almost rebutted that it wasn’t entirely his fault that he had lost the last one, “are in my jeep.”

“In your jeep? Wait, you drove all the way out here?” Chuck’s steps slowed.

Sarah tugged on his hand. She had said she was only holding on to keep him warm. “Yes, I drove all the way out here.”

“What time did you leave?”

“Midnight. As soon as I got that pathetic excuse of an email you sent.”

Still furious, Chuck thought, that he had disappeared, and she was likely to stay that way. Still, he felt a stab of insult. “What the hell was pathetic about it?”

“You sent me a clip from a B-movie and the words ‘Having a grand old time!’”

“What if your email had been hacked?”

“Then the hacker would have figured it out two minutes later anyway.”

Chuck fell silent. It wasn’t a terribly long walk to the cars, but Sarah had unfortunately forced him to notice just how uncomfortable the cold was getting with his wet shoes, and his wet shirt, and his sweatpants soaked from sitting in the snow. After a minute, he cleared his throat. “‘Witch Canyon’ is actually a pretty decent film. Maybe we can get a personal DVD player and watch it on the plane.”

“I think I’ve had enough of canyons for now.”

Sarah made him sit in the car and warm up while she went and wiped down the SUV he had taken from the crime scene, and updated Casey and possibly Ellie while she was at it, he imagined. It rankled to have to wait in the car, but Sarah could move faster without him.

And hey, he could always put his time to good use resetting all of her radio stations.

**26 NOVEMBER 2007**  
 **WALDBAUM’S DEPARTMENT STORE, FLAGSTAFF, AZ**  
 **09:56 MST**  


He had thought “we need to get you some clothes” meant one outfit, like pants and a shirt, some fresh underwear and maybe a new pair of chucks since his probably still had Jill’s blood on them, and they were soaked through from the snow at the Grand Canyon.

He underestimated the force of nature that was Sarah Walker in a department store.

The hooks in the dressing room weren’t enough to hold all of the different things Sarah wanted him to try on, so he managed as best he could and dumped the rest in the corner. There was no dressing room attendant to contend with, as they had most of the store to themselves. They’d come in right after it opened, and Sarah had wasted no time wandering through the racks, shoving different shirts and pants and various items of clothing at him. He hadn’t asked how she had known his size. He had just played catch and tried to follow.

Now, he shoved the last of the shirts onto one of the racks and took a deep breath. Thirty-six hours off the grid, as Sarah had put it when she had called in confirmation that she had located “the asset.” They weren’t calling him Agent Carmichael or Agent Bartowski or Prometheus or Stargazer. Until they knew the full extent of Fulcrum’s knowledge of him, he had been stripped of all names, responsibilities, and—he thought of the CIA partner waiting outside of the waiting room now, probably picking up another ten or so shirts for him to try on while she waited—liberties. He was going to DC, where he would be in the presence of one of his Prometheus teammates at all times.

He should have stayed invisible longer. Not that it would have solved anything. He’d had only the clothes on his back, a little cash, and no gas left. His choices had been to panhandle or starve. And if he’d held off making contact longer, he wasn’t sure he would be walking away with a few punches to the arm from Sarah (and he still had Casey’s, and then Ellie’s, wrath to face).

Chuck stripped out of the FBI T-shirt and held it away from him. He’d never seen Sarah even so much as tear up, but damn, the woman could produce a lot of snot and saline when she put her mind to it. He tossed it in the corner and pulled off the sweatpants.

Of course, that was when the door opened.

“Gah!” Chuck leaped back away and snatched the first article of clothing that came to hand. But it wasn’t an assassin—or not one coming to kill him, at least.

Sarah took in the shirt and Chuck’s jump and rolled her eyes. She closed the door behind her.

“Sarah, this is the men’s dressing room! How did you—” His modesty protected by only his boxers and the shirt he held in front of him, Chuck craned to get a look at the door latch. “How _did_ you get in here?”

“Drop the shirt,” Sarah said.

“Sarah, I’m practically naked here—”

“That’s the point. Drop the shirt.” Sarah rolled her eyes a second time when he gave her a disbelieving look. “I want to get a look at that bruise on your chest, and see if you have any other injuries from the motel. I’m not in here to ravish you.”

Chuck couldn’t stop the stab of disappointment.

Sarah caught the look and folded her arms over her chest, one eyebrow higher than the other. “The shirt, Chuck.”

“No.”

“Do not make me fight you for it. You’re almost naked and I’m armed.”

Chuck clung to the shirt like a lifeline. “That’s the problem!”

He could actually see Sarah pray for patience, which might have amused him at any other point in time. Except right now, when he was fighting desperately to keep his modesty. “Chuck, I’ve seen you in nothing but your boxers before. It’s not a big deal.”

“You have not.”

“Excuse me? What were you wearing when I had to climb into bed with you in the bungalow in Greece?”

The bungalow in—Chuck abruptly flashed back to that moment and went the color of a siren. “Oh crap.”

“I’ll have you know you tried to spoon me, too.”

Chuck flushed deeper. “I did not!”

Sarah just tilted her head, the slightest bit. It was more of a smartass comment than she would actually ever verbalize, and Chuck’s red hue deepened considerably. “The shirt?” Sarah asked.

“Here’s a compromise: I’ll put some pants on and then you can examine the bruise.”

Sarah sighed. “Will that make you feel better?”

“Immeasurably.”

“Fine.”

Chuck waited; Sarah didn’t move. “Um,” he said after a minute. “This is the part where you turn around.”

“You’re seriously going to—of course you are.” Sarah cast her eyes to the ceiling and spun around on the spot. “There. Satisfied?”

“Immeasurably,” Chuck said again, and dropped the shirt. He scrambled into the first pair of jeans he found. He didn’t put it past Sarah to turn around before he was ready, but she was evidently a woman of her word, for she didn’t turn until Chuck had cleared his throat pointedly.

When she turned around, too, she was once more the clinical and observant Agent Walker. She only touched him to prod at the bruise and to ask him how badly it hurt, and to make sure none of his ribs were cracked or broken. 

“That’s it?” Chuck asked when she declared herself done.

“I told you it wasn’t a big deal.” Still, Sarah smirked and glanced down. “Those jeans look good on you. Good fit.” And she left him alone to change in peace.

**26 NOVEMBER 2007**  
 **I-17 S (TOWARD PHOENIX, AZ)**  
 **10:42 MST**

Chuck had been intending to bully Sarah into tossing over the keys, as he’d seen her eyelids droop several times during what he was now calling the Scary Sarah Shopping Spree, so he was startled when she had handed them to him without a word outside of Waldbaum’s. He hadn’t asked, but it was pretty obvious that she hadn’t slept much in the past seventy-two hours, which made a nice little nugget of guilt lodge itself beneath his ribcage as he programmed in the Phoenix airport as a destination into the GPS on Sarah’s dashboard. Their flight was a few hours off, but it would take a couple of hours to get to the airport, so it all worked out.

Sarah had practically insisted on a new wardrobe for him, pointing out that neither of them had any idea how long they would be in DC, and if they let Casey pack Chuck’s clothes back in Burbank, he’d be living in suits for the next however-long-it-took. When Chuck wondered why Sarah didn’t need legions of outfits, she mentioned that she could always go to her apartment in DC to get more clothing.

“You’ve still got that?”

“I didn’t get a chance to shut everything down when the operation was set in Burbank.” Sarah said. “Maybe I’ll get to this time. Mm, I miss my car.”

“Your car?”

“My Porsche.” Sarah drew out the word into several syllables, almost a purr, while she arranged the road trip snacks Chuck had insisted on.

“You have a…yeah, I can see it. It fits. Though isn’t it a bit cliché?”

“What?”

“Bad-ass spy with a Porsche?”

Sarah leveled a deadpan stare at him. “It goes fast. I like to go fast.”

“Uh, noted.”

“Whereas,” and here Sarah leaned over to look at the speedometer, “you seem to enjoy going the speed limit. Barely.” Her voice dripped with disdain.

“We’ll get there when we get there.”

“Sure we will. We’ll just get there slowly.” Sarah grinned, good-naturedly, to take the sting out of her tease. He saw her studying him in that way she had. She could get a perfectly good read on him from the corner of her eye, he knew, but when he puzzled her the most, she dropped pretenses, turned her face toward him, and studied until she figured out what it was she was trying to solve. He could ask her what was on her mind, but she was just as likely to evade as she was to answer. The only surefire way to get her to talk was simply to wait.

Indeed, she turned her face back to the windshield. They were heading out of Flagstaff, about to hit the open highway. “You’re doing better,” she said, mildly, like she was making conversation about the weather.

Chuck shrugged.

“I mean in general. You went to the Grand Canyon on your own.”

“I know.”

“It’s a big deal.”

“There weren’t a lot of people around at seven in the morning after a snowstorm.” Because he wanted to squirm, Chuck kept his spine rigid against the back of the seat. It took only a few seconds to realize how idiotic that was, and he rubbed a hand over his chin. He wasn’t used to the scruff of a few days of stubble, not after he’d been clean-shaven for years. “I had a few bad moments yesterday.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

Chuck shrugged. “Too many people, too much space. I curled up in the car and slept it off.”

“While it was snowing?” Sarah’s eyes widened. “You must have been freezing!”

“It wasn’t that bad. I’ve been colder.”

“You should have called.”

“I know.”

“You should have—” Sarah broke off mid-sentence and blinked at him. His agreeing with her apparently took the wind out of her sails, but he could almost witness the neurons in her brain firing as she regrouped. “I would have booked you a hotel room to wait where you could be warm until either Casey or I could come get you.”

Chuck kept his eyes on the road. “But then I wouldn’t have gotten to see the sunset and the sunrise.”

“We can come back to the Grand Canyon at some other time, Chuck.”

“Can we?”

Sarah reached up and turned the radio off. “That’s what this is about,” she said, crossing her arms. The move wasn’t protective or contrary; she seemed genuinely lost in thought. “I should have realized this before. You’re worried about DC.”

“Worried is a bit of a strong word. Concerned. Mildly concerned.” Without the radio in the car, it was far too silent. Chuck wanted to fidget.

“What do you think is going to happen there, Chuck?”

“Look, the last time we were in DC, the last time I saw you…” Chuck’s eyes never left the road. “None of it has anything to do with why I left the motel the other night, but now that I’ve had some time to stop and think, it…” He trailed off and shrugged again.

“You’re thinking of the detention center,” Sarah surmised. “You think that’s where we’re going back to?”

“It’d be the smartest move,” Chuck said. “Going back into detention, where the Intersect would be safest.”

“The Intersect is just one tiny part of you, Chuck, and let’s face it, Agent Davenport owns all of you.”

Chuck blinked and finally looked over at Sarah. She had pulled her feet up onto the seat and was hugging her knees, just like she had back at the Canyon. “Agent Davenport?”

“Did you completely forget you’ve got a virtually untouchable rep looking out for you? They’re not even putting you up in a hotel. We’re all staying at Gwen’s house. Ellie and Devon are sharing the guest-house with me, and you and Casey will be roomies in the main house.”

“What?”

“Unless you’d rather share a room with me,” Sarah went on, giving him the patented “make Chuck squirm” smirk.

“You enjoy making me turn red, don’t you?”

“It’s a good color on you.” Sarah patted his arm. “Don’t worry about DC. Casey and I will be with you every step of the way, provided he doesn’t kill you first. And from there, well, we’ll all figure it out. Together.”

“Go team,” Chuck said weakly, though he couldn’t quite hide the relief coursing through him. He glanced over when Sarah put her seat back. “Taking a nap?”

“It’s been too long since I’ve slept. You’ll be okay driving? It’s not getting to you, is it?”

“It’s fine.”

“Wake me if there’s trouble.” Sarah loosened her seatbelt to get comfortable and, just like that, curled up on the passenger seat of the Jeep, facing away from him. Her shoulders immediately went slack. Agent training allowing her to sleep right away? Chuck figured that was the case.

Still, he cleared his throat and said, mostly inaudible, “I’m sorry I made you cry.”

He heard a sleepy sigh and an even sleepier “Don’t worry about it, Chuck,” and he felt better.

**26 NOVEMBER 2007**  
 **FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTUTION**  
 **12:36 MST**

It didn’t take Sarah long to realize the Jeep was slowing, but then, Chuck hadn’t expected it to. He could only be grateful that the prison itself wasn’t too far off of the highway, since Sarah didn’t seem interested in waking too fast. She took her time stretching her arms over her head, her fingers spread as far as they would go, before she turned on her side to face him. Her smile was slightly drowsy. “We’re there already?”

Chuck’s knuckles tightened on the wheel. He’d been driving himself to illness second-guessing his decision to change the route, so he simply said, “Not quite.”

Sarah’s hand immediately went for her gun, but she forced herself to relaxed. Instead, she gave him a wary look and worked the lever on her seat until she was upright. He saw her eyes take in the details of their surroundings, and he saw the instant she twigged to their location.

All in all, he considered himself incredibly lucky she didn’t pull a gun on him, or that her hand didn’t even twitch toward one of her knife stashes.

Instead, her eyes settled, colder than the day outside, on his face. “You hacked my file.”

“I didn’t hack your file.”

“Then how do you—”

“I flashed on Randy.” Chuck turned the wheel to pull the Jeep into the parking lot for the Phoenix Correctional Institution. It looked nice, was his errant thought. Well, on the outside, it looked nice. He had no idea what the inside looked like, as he figured prison movies had been lying to him all of his life. He pulled into a parking spot and rubbed his hands over his face. Driving without music had been boring, but he hadn’t wanted to wake Sarah.

Of course, maybe he should have let her sleep, if the unimpressed, angry look on her face was anything to go by.

“I flashed on Randy in the back of that ambulance in Greece, and I didn’t think anything of it when I wrote up the flash file later. In Burbank,” Chuck said, though he wasn’t sure if that was necessary. “But when we got the Sergei Ezersky assignment, you were looking at the file like it meant something, and I wanted to know why, so I did a little digging.”

“And it didn’t occur to you that that was private?” Sarah’s tone could freeze oceans.

This was a really bad idea, Chuck realized. “Yeah, it occurred to me.”

“And?”

Chuck turned off the car and stared out at the gates surrounding the prison. “And I thought that since we were driving right by, you might like to stop in and say hi.” When Sarah’s furious face did not lessen in the slightest, Chuck rubbed his hands over his face again. “Obviously, I know it’s your business and you’re just generally a private person, so I don’t know if I ever would have brought it up. But opportunity presented itself, so here we are.”

Sarah unhooked her seatbelt and slammed her back against the seat, her arms crossed over her chest. This time, there was nothing thoughtful about the move. She was pissed.

“How long have you known?” she asked through what sounded like clenched teeth.

“Few days. Back before all of the stuff with Jill exploded.”

“How did you even…I’m not listed anywhere as Jenny Burton anymore.” Now Sarah sounded puzzled. “The CIA would have removed all of that information.”

Chuck swallowed hard.

“They didn’t get it all,” he said, and deliberately kept his eyes on the scene outside the windshield. Sarah was far too good at reading him. “There was an article about his arrest where they mentioned a daughter, and something…seemed off, so I went looking on the sites for pictures of any Burton girls in that school district and—what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Horrified” wasn’t quite how he would classify the look on Sarah’s face, but it came close. “You saw my high school picture?” 

“Uh…” Tread carefully, Bartowski, his brain warned, sounding oddly like Casey. “Yes?”

“And you didn’t think that maybe the fact that you had found any of this was pertinent information to me?”

“Honestly? It slipped my mind. Don’t—don’t hit me again.” Chuck held his hands up for peace. “It was a very small picture. You were in the middle of a crowd. Very pixilated. There was just enough to tell me that it was you.”

Sarah put her hand over her mouth. She looked only marginally less horrified than she had been a minute before.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re angrier about that than the fact that I flashed on your dad?” Chuck asked warily.

“You flashed on my dad?”

“Okay, I take that back, you’re equally angry about both,” Chuck said. When Sarah’s hand squeezed into a fist, he closed his eyes, expecting yet another smack, but Sarah only sucked in a deep breath and hit the side of her fist rhythmically against the door. Hard enough to probably leave a dent. “When I looked up the name, there was a picture, and I flashed on it. I didn’t flash on your high school picture, though, so the Jenny Burton connection definitely isn’t in the Intersect.”

“And you were just never going to bring this up?”

“Well, I’d hoped you might mention that Sarah Walker’s not your real name at _some_ point.”

Sarah gave him a bland stare. Definitely not the time for levity yet, Chuck decided. “No,” he went on. “Not until you did. Except, you know, your dad’s in there and I thought you might like to say hi.”

“You have to schedule these things in advance, Chuck.”

“What’s the fun of having a government badge if you can’t use it?” Chuck asked. “You don’t get to see him very often.”

Sarah shook her head. “It’s not safe. I don’t like to use my Jenny Burton credentials.”

“About Jenny Burton…”

“No, I’m not really a Jenny.”

“Oh. Good. Because I didn’t think you looked like a Jenny and there was a whole disconnect and…you’re still mad at me, stop talking, Chuck, got it.” Chuck shut his mouth and even mimed zipping up his lips.

It worked. Sarah rolled her eyes, but he could sense a thaw in the iceberg. “He’s out in three months.”

“Who knows where you’ll be in three months?”

“We have a plane to catch.”

“Not for hours.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone out here.”

“I’ll be fine.” He had no idea if he was telling the truth or lying, but when Sarah gave him a suspicious look, he mustered up a grin. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were scared.”

Immediately, the suspicion turned to a scowl. “Not scared. Just…it’s complicated.”

“Oh.” Chuck deflated against the seat. “I didn’t realize. We can go. You don’t have to go in. I’m sorry I dared you—”

“No, it’s okay.” Sarah took a deep breath and blew it out as she pulled on her shoes. Bent forward so that she wasn’t visible outside the car, she began to unload a veritable cache of weapons: her Smith & Wesson, two knife holsters, one loose knife, her earrings—Chuck wasn’t sure he wanted to know exactly why that was—and a belt-buckle knife. She loaded these into the glove compartment and pulled down the visor. Chuck would have chuckled at her for wanting to check her makeup, but Sarah twisted a little angel pendant on the visor.

A panel between the seats opened. Chuck goggled to see stashes of several types of currency and a packet of passports tucked in, as well as a couple more Smith & Wessons. “Holy—”

“Emergency stuff,” Sarah said. She grabbed the passports and thumbed through them until she found the one she sought, and then a matching FBI badge. When Chuck goggled, she sighed and flipped it open for him to see. “Best to cover all contingencies.”

“Let me see that.” Chuck snatched the passport away before she could think to keep it out of his reach and peered at the picture. He looked between her and the photograph and said, “Huh.”

Sarah grabbed the passport back. 

“I definitely prefer you as a blonde than, what is that? Red hair? Ginger? Brown? I couldn’t tell, can I see that again?”

“I should’ve shot you at the Grand Canyon,” Sarah muttered, and tucked the Jenny Burton passport into her pocket. “Stay in the car, Chuck. If there’s trouble, call me.”

“Will do.”

“I won’t be long.” 

Chuck watched her walk away and vanish through the front doors of the visitors’ complex. She spared one look at the car, and it was only a fleeting glance over her shoulder before she disappeared beyond the guards. The instant she was out of sight, he let out the breath he had been holding and sagged back against the seat.

He had lied. Sure, he had flashed on Jack Burton when he had looked the man up a few days before, but there had been absolutely no mention of a Jenny Burton anywhere in the file, or on the Internet. Chuck might not have even wondered about it if Sarah hadn’t stiffened upon seeing the file on Randy. Since there hadn’t been anything incriminating on Randy in that flash, something about one of the two listed associates meant something to her. Terrence Jaymer was dead, had been for a few years, but Jackson Burton was still alive and in prison, and had been for the past eight and a half years. 

There had been nothing mentioning that Jack had a daughter. Pulling into the prison parking lot had been a gamble, to see exactly who Jack Burton was to Sarah. He’d expected old family friend. He had _not_ expected for Jack to be Sarah’s father. But he supposed it made sense. Sarah and even Ellie had dropped hints that Sarah’s upbringing had been unique. Still, he’d had absolutely no idea that his gamble would pay off quite like _this_.

He took a deep breath. Had he screwed up? He should have been honest, and just talked to her about it. But he’d had ample time to think about Sarah the day before—he had thought about little else, save to try and figure out how he really felt about stabbing a man in the liver and killing him—well, almost killing him, since Sarah had taken that burden from him, and Chuck still had no idea how he felt about _that_ and about how Sarah was willing to do things like that for him. He wouldn’t be able to sleep easy for awhile, if ever—and it all came down to one thing: what the hell did he really know about Sarah Walker?

But on the other hand, what the hell did _he_ know about Sarah Walker? Not even her real name, apparently. Sure, he knew the important things: small faces freaked her out, she liked adrenaline, she had gone to Harvard, she had a wicked and slightly mean sense of humor, she wasn’t a morning person, she hated Red Bull. And now, apparently, she thought he was “neat.”

She was beautiful, but that went without saying.

She liked him. She liked him so much, she had broken down in tears because he had vanished off the face of the earth. She liked him enough to drive all night through the desert, and take a picture with him at the Grand Canyon, even though her face had been pretty wrecked from crying (not that he would tell her that. Ever.). 

And now, Chuck thought, he knew three new things about Sarah Walker: she hadn’t liked high school, her father was getting out early from a fifteen-year stretch in a concrete cage for good behavior, and her name was really neither Sarah nor Jenny.

None of that information did a single thing to explain one important thing: _why_ she liked him.

**26 NOVEMBER 2007**  
 **FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTUTION**  
 **13:12 MST**

She came out, and her eyes were dry, but Chuck knew better. He didn’t say anything as she picked her way across the parking lot, the guards watching her go with an appreciation that annoyed him. Since they were bulkier than two of him standing side by side, he couldn’t exactly do anything, and he doubted Sarah even paid attention. Sure, she noticed—the woman could put hawks to shame—but she didn’t acknowledge. She had her head down and her hands in her pockets. She walked slowly.

He waited, his hands never slowing at their task. The car hood had been far too warm at first, but had cooled enough that he was perched comfortably, his project in his lap and spread all around him. “Hey,” he called.

She looked up to smile back, and stilled. “Are you really doing that?”

“Yup.”

“You’re sharpening knives in a prison parking lot.”

The knives had been a personal test, one he had passed. His grin now hid the turmoil, the fact that he’d seen the shocked face of Leader during the first few swipes across the strop. Thankfully, it had faded. “I know, badass, right? You let them get pretty dull, so I thought I’d give you a hand.”

Sarah’s eyes widened. “Holy hell, Chuck. They’re going to body-cavity search you.”

“Wh-what? Just to leave the parking lot? Why?”

“He wants to meet you.” Sarah looked down and kicked a rock across the pavement so that he couldn’t read her face.

The spurt of fear—fear he felt was perfectly natural being so close to a prison—turned into a full-on flood that threatened to make him light-headed and dizzy. That particular terror, however, had nothing to do with hardened convicts and beefy prison guards. He swallowed hard to put moisture back in his throat. “Isn’t it a little…soon to be meeting the parents?”

Sarah didn’t crack the smile he’d been hoping for. “Probably, but he wants to meet you. You don’t have to, you know. If you’re uncomfortable, or you think you can’t handle it…”

Chuck set the knife collection aside and pushed himself off of the hood. “Um, how do I look? Is this shirt okay? Damn it, I wish I’d packed something better than this—”

“Chuck, it’s fine.”

“I’m wearing a shirt with Artoo-Detoo going ‘Droids do it on wheels!’ on it into a prison, Sarah! That’s hardly _fine._ ”

Sarah smiled—a real smile this time—and shook her head. Without a word, she retrieved something from the backseat. She held out his black jacket.

“Oh, right,” Chuck said. He pulled the jacket on and took a deep breath as he covered Artoo’s grinning visage.

It did nothing to steady him.

“Are you going to be all right?”

“Uh, yeah.” Maybe. No. Probably not. He’d never been in a prison before. A prison containing the father of a woman he was interested in? That threw a whole new Dalek ship into the Time Wars. “He’s, uh, he’s not going to try and shank me, is he?”

Sarah stepped close so that she could smooth down the lapels of his jacket. “My father abhors violence.”

“So…I’m guessing he doesn’t know what you do for a living.”

Storm-clouds crossed briefly over Sarah’s face. “No, he doesn’t. So don’t tell him.”

“What on earth are we supposed to talk about, then?”

“My father’s a very personable guy. You’ll find something.” After she’d stowed her knives in the glove box, Sarah threaded her arm through his and started walking him to the front gate. She paused about twenty feet away from the guards and turned to face Chuck. “Just don’t, uh, don’t let him talk you out of any money, okay?”

“Don’t worry, all twelve dollars in my bank account are perfectly safe,” Chuck said, doing his best to look solemn. Inside, he felt as though rattlers had come to life in his midsection, and they were biting. Hard. He took a deep breath before he touched her arm. She was always doing things like that to him, but it was so much harder when he was the one reaching out. He wasn’t sure what he was allowed to do. When she didn’t protest at the contact, he nearly let out a sigh of relief. “Are _you_ okay?”

Sarah mustered up a smile for him. “I’m fine, Chuck. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“You don’t have to go in there, but I appreciate that you are.”

“Well, hey, you don’t get to meet the gir—the partner’s dad for the first time more than once.” Chuck tried to give her a disaffected shrug, but doubt crept into his voice. He leaned toward her, but only so that he could mutter, “That was a definite no on the shanking, right? Because you didn’t exactly give me an answer and—”

“I promise, my dad won’t hurt you.” Sarah smiled, smoothed his jacket down one last time, and handed him his wallet.

He scowled. “Maybe it’s not your dad I should be worried about taking my money.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I _am_ going to catch you at it one of these days.”

“Sure.”

Chuck started to turn away, but something occurred to him mid-turn. He swiveled back. “Um, maybe in the panic, I didn’t think to ask, but _why_ does your father want to meet _me_?”

“He’s curious.”

“You—you talked about me?” He suddenly felt the need to sit down. He resisted only because the parking lot didn’t look comfortable.

Sarah bit her lip over a smile, her eyes never leaving his. “He wants to meet you. I mean, it’s partially that he doesn’t see a lot of people and he’s looking for somebody new to swindle…”

Chuck gave her a sour look. It only made her smile brighten.

“But you’re a good guy, Chuck, and he wants to chat. No reason to be nervous.”

“Oh, sure.” Chuck felt the first stages of the ulcer take hold. “I’m only meeting the father of the great Sarah Walker. No reason to be nervous about that whatsoever.” The sour look returned. 

Sarah just chuckled and ran her hands up his arms, just once. It sent flickers of electricity pulsing through him. “You’ll be fine.”

“After this, we’re going for ice cream.” Chuck shoved his hands into his pockets, gave her a final smile that was more of a pained grimace than anything, and headed toward the visitor’s entrance. Of course, he thought as he made the trudge with the rattlers alive and kicking in his stomach, they’d probably have to get ice cream at the airport. If they weren’t on a plane within the next three hours, Casey was going to instantaneously develop abilities of flight, soar out to Arizona, and drag them to DC himself. It might be worth it to see Casey fly, but maybe it was better not to tempt fate.

One of the guards reached out to tap him on the arm as he walked by. Chuck tensed and fought down the urge to jump away.

But the guard wasn’t scowling or glaring. Instead, he looked inquisitively at Chuck, one eyebrow raised. His eyes cut to something over Chuck’s shoulder and back to him.

Chuck looked over his shoulder. Sarah was leaning against the hood of her jeep, her arms crossed over her chest. She gave him a little wave when she noticed the attention.

Chuck waved back and turned to the guard. “Believe me,” he said, “I have no idea what she sees in me either.”

The guards laughed. Chuck joined them, though it was hard to laugh and hold back to the urge to vomit at the same time. He left them by the front gate, grinning after him, and headed into the prison. He tried not to let it feel like he was facing his doom.

He didn’t succeed.


	37. District of Confusion, District of Comfort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment. — _Bob Packwood_

**27 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**FEDERAL CORRECTION INSTITUTION**   
**13:19 MST**

Sarah must have cleared the way, as Chuck didn’t have to flash any credentials at the guards. They took his name, looked at his driver’s license, and wrote the time down in the logbook. They didn’t quite strip-search him, but they came close. By the time the guards finished patting him down, Chuck was covered with a light sheen of sweat that had nothing to do with the thought of meeting the father of the woman that liked him.

Oh geez. Did Sarah want to sleep with him? Why the hell was he thinking about that now when he was just minutes away from meeting her father? Oh, God. Did Sarah want to get naked with him? He’d seen her naked, she definitely outclassed him in that—God! Now was not the time to think about that! Did he seriously hate himself that much?

Chuck pinned the badge they handed him to the front of his jacket, grateful they’d let him put that back on. Why the hell had he talked Sarah into letting him get the Artoo-Detoo shirt? It had seemed important at the time, but now, just like his stupid prison gambit, it was coming back to bite him in the ass.

And oh God, he wished he’d thought to ask at least a little more about Sarah’s relationship with her father before agreeing to do this. There was a difference between abhorring violence and meeting the daughter’s…whatever Chuck was to her for the first time. Chuck pushed down the ball of nausea threatening to make him throw up all over the processing room floor and instead moved to the doorway as directed by the guards. The one who had patted him down had walked him through the rules of the visiting room, and they seemed pretty self-explanatory.

They also seemed like shanking wasn’t a regular occurrence, too. Put in perspective, that was a relief. Sarah’s father might have a problem with violence, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t outsource it, if he was the overprotective type. And he probably was. Chuck couldn’t imagine having a daughter that looked like Sarah without being overprotective.

What the hell had she told her dad about him? Hey, Dad, the guy who made me break down in tears for over twenty minutes this morning is right outside. You should meet my new coworker, he’s really great. He vanishes off the face of the earth for over a day and leaves me to pick up the slack, isn’t he nice? He’s so awesome I’d kill for him. Oh, wait, I already have!

This time, the nausea had absolutely nothing to do with fear of Jack Burton. Chuck pushed the image of the blood dripping off of the knife in Leader’s hand forcibly from his mind and stood in the doorway. Something buzzed, and the guard inside the visiting room pulled the door open for him.

It wasn’t hard to pick Jack Burton out of the crowd. Even if Chuck hadn’t flashed on him, there weren’t that many people visiting their loved ones at the prison, so most of the tables were empty. Sarah’s father wasn’t a terribly imposing man, Chuck saw right away. He was clean-shaven, he didn’t seem to bear any prison ink, and he rose with a genial smile when Chuck approached. He was also handsome, which Chuck figured was fitting given that his daughter looked like Sarah Walker, and Chuck would never have pegged him for a criminal, also fitting because Chuck would never have guessed CIA agent for Sarah.

He had an enthusiastic handshake, like a traveling salesman or a preacher, and the smile didn’t lessen at all. “So you’re the one my daughter spent twenty minutes not talking about,” he said.

Chuck’s mouth fell open a little, but he recovered quickly. “Uh, I guess that’s me. Chuck. Uh, Chuck—yeah, never mind, probably better just to keep it Chuck. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Burton.”

“Please, call me Jack. Sit, sit.” Jack gestured toward the visitor’s chair across the table from him. Feeling somewhat ill, Chuck obeyed. The chair wobbled, and it was one of those uncomfortable chairs that made Chuck feel as though he had been transported back to high school. Of course, maybe that feeling stemmed from the fact that he once again felt seventeen and meeting the father of his prom date for the first time. He was just glad he wasn’t wearing a tuxedo with a bow tie pinching his neck this time.

He imagined that it would look even more out of place in a prison visiting room than it had in the Kennilworths’ paisley-patterned living room.

“So, Chuck,” Jack said, drawing the word out like he wasn’t sure it was a real name. “What is it you do and how do you know my daughter?”

Chuck’s mind went absolutely blank. What had Sarah said? She had said not to tell Jack what she really did for a living, but did that include her cover as an office manager for Pacific Securities, LLC? Or was it all off-limits?

“It wasn’t _that_ hard of a question,” Jack said. “Need a glass of water?”

“No, no, I’m fine.” Though now that water had been mentioned, his throat was drier than the desert outside. Chuck swallowed hard and tried for a self-deprecating grin. “First time in a prison. Just…getting used to the atmosphere.”

“A tip, son? Don’t do anything that gets you beyond that door right there.” Jack nodded at a door off to the left. Chuck had to assume that it was the inmates’ entrance into the visiting room. “At least, don’t get caught.”

“Right.” Chuck swallowed again. “Right. Well, to answer your question, I’m a software designer out in L.A. I have my own firm, and I know Sa—your daughter because she’s my sister’s roommate.”

“Mm-hmm.” Jack leaned back and put his fingertips together, creating a steeple with his fingers as he studied Chuck. “And what are your intentions toward my daughter?”

Chuck felt all of the blood rush out of his face.

Jack Burton burst out laughing. It was the last noise Chuck expected to hear, so he felt it was understandable that he jumped. He stared, torn between confusion and mortification as Jack continued to laugh until he had to wipe at his eyes. “I’m sorry,” the man said, surprising Chuck. “I really shouldn’t have done that, but she told me if I asked you that, your face would go exactly that color. I couldn’t resist.”

Immediately, Chuck scowled. “Very funny, Sarah,” he muttered under his breath. It appeared Sarah would be getting her revenge for quite some time for his stunt of leaving the Heartbrake Hotel behind, or maybe for driving up to the prison. He cleared his throat. “So you really don’t want to know my intentions?”

“Hell, my daughter’s a grown woman. She can take care of herself.” Pride in that fact, mixed with emotion that Chuck couldn’t quite decipher, glinted in Jack’s smile. “I’m not here to interrogate you. It’s just nice to have a change of pace every once in awhile and talk to somebody new. So tell me, how are things in the software game?”

Chuck opened his mouth, and burst out laughing just as Jack had a minute before. “Things are great,” he lied, and spent the next twenty minutes just shooting the breeze with a convicted criminal and the father of a woman who puzzled him as often as she made him feel safe.

**27 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**SKYBORN FLIGHT 1337 (SOMEWHERE OVER OKLAHOMA)**   
**18:02 CST**

Keeping his movements slow and sly, Chuck carefully slid his watch face around so that it lay against the inside of his wrist. He’d set the timer—he checked now—twenty-three minutes and seventeen seconds before. He let another couple of seconds tick by before he returned his attention to the comic book open across the tray-table in front of him.

The fact that it was taking so long surprised him. It also made him glad he hadn’t made any bets on it because he’d surely be paying _somebody_ by now. Apparently, Sarah Walker had more patience than even he had suspected, which startled him. After all, he was Chuck Bartowski. His entire existence on this earth seemed to revolve around testing the limits of Sarah Walker’s patience, which meant that he was intimate with the knowledge of how long testing said limits should take.

He turned a page and smirked to himself, ignoring the constant bubble of fear in the back of his mind that the longer those seconds ticked by, the closer they came to DC and what awaited them there.

Sarah hadn’t turned the page in over half an hour, which was what had alerted him. After awhile, he’d set his watch, and he’d spent the twenty-four minutes and thirty two seconds since observing her out of the corner of his eye, watching the way her fingers flexed on the pages of the _Sky Mall_ she’d been pretending to be reading, watching her eyes shift constantly toward him and quickly look away. He knew that if they had been on a mission or if this was a cover, she could last for ages, but since it was just Sarah, she was close to her breaking point.

He’d wait her out.

**27 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**SKYBORN FLIGHT 1337 (SOMEWHERE OVER TENNESSEE)**   
**20:04 EST**

Sarah had by now managed to surpass even Chuck’s estimation of her patience. She had even turned the page of the _Sky Mall_.

Once.

Did the woman have superpowers that let her sit that still? Chuck didn’t look at his watch, even though he knew exactly what it would say. He just continued to idly turn the pages of the graphic novel Sarah had bought for him at the airport in Phoenix, just like Sarah continued to stare at the magazine in front of her.

This was getting ridiculous.

So, deliberately, he cleared his throat. “That’s interesting.”

Sarah nearly dropped the magazine, she lowered it so fast. “What? What is?”

“I’m not enjoying this as much I thought I would,” Chuck said, holding up the copy of _Wanted_. He deliberately made his smile of the clueless variety. “I mean, Millar did such great work with ‘Red Son,’ but this…” He closed the graphic novel and tucked it into the knapsack they’d picked up for him at Waldbaum’s earlier that morning. “It’s disappointing, a bit.”

“Oh.” Sarah seemed to deflate. “I’m sorry to hear that, Chuck.”

“I’ll get over it. Enjoying that page?”

Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been watching me.”

Chuck merely turned the face of his watch so that she could see the one hour, twenty-six minutes, and twelve seconds displayed there. One hour, twenty-six minutes, and twelve seconds closer to DC.

Sarah’s jaw dropped. “You’ve really _have_ been watching me!”

“Didn’t they teach you how to turn the page in spy school?” Chuck wondered, and dodged the playful smack, laughing. One of the men sitting across the aisle sent over a disapproving look, but Chuck ignored him. He’d found it easy enough to ignore all of the people on the plane by focusing on Sarah’s apparent neurosis over the conversation with her father. Besides, being crammed into the 737 was actually comforting, in a way. It bespoke a lot about him that he breathed easier with recycled air than he had in the open desert. “I mean, that’s supposed to be the first rule in the handbook, right?”

“First rule is don’t get dead,” Sarah muttered, picking up the magazine. First, though, she maturely stuck her tongue out at him.

Chuck just grinned. “You should just go ahead and ask me.”

“Who said I wanted to ask you anything?”

“The fact that you’ve only turned one page in,” Chuck checked his watch, “one hour, twenty seven minutes, and forty-nine seconds?”

“That’s not fair! The stopwatch should have stopped after you called my attention to it!”

“Turn a page, then.”

Sarah’s chin went up. She closed the magazine.

“Okay.” Grinning, Chuck put his tray table up and reclined his seat. “Wake me when we get to DC?”

Sarah mumbled something.

“What was that?” Chuck asked, though he’d heard her perfectly.

“I said, you win.” Sarah gave a sigh, obviously disgusted with herself. “What did you talk to my father about, Chuck? And don’t you dare evade. I was taught by the master evader, I’ll know if you try.”

“Oh, trust me, I know.”

Sarah’s eyes narrowed again.

“Right. Sorry.” Chuck held his hands up for peace as he put his seat-back up. “Well, the first thing he said to me was, ‘So you’re the guy my daughter spent twenty minutes not talking about.’”

“He did not!”

“God’s honest truth, Sarah,” Chuck said, holding up three fingers in a Scout Oath. He grinned even while Sarah looked as if she might have liked to disappear right into the plane seat. “And then he told me to stay out of prison and asked me my intentions toward you.”

Sarah was silent for a long moment before she abruptly turned and faced the seat in front of her. She had insisted on taking the aisle seat, leaving the window to Chuck and placing herself between him and any danger that might come from other passengers.

“Are you blushing?” Chuck wanted to know, craning so that he could get a better look.

Sarah set her teeth.

“You are!”

“Shut up, Chuck.”

Chuck collapsed against his seat, laughing.

“Glad you’re enjoying this.”

He wasn’t, entirely. There was an edge of hysteria to his laughter that Sarah was either ignoring or she didn’t hear. “Turnabout is only fair play since your dad was messing with me. He said something about how you told him my face would go that color if he asked me my intentions, so…” He returned the favor by sticking his tongue out right back at her.

She rolled her eyes. “I told him _not_ to mess with you like that.”

“Why? You do it all the time.”

“But that’s me.” Sarah’s frown was one dangerously small half-step away from a pout. “I’m allowed. I’ve earned the right.”

Chuck had to laugh again. “Oh, you have, have you?”

Sarah picked up the _Sky Mall_ , opened it, and deliberately turned the page. Chuck tilted his head, a salute to a worthy opponent, and stopped his watch. It made Sarah roll her eyes again even as she smiled, and the conversation paused as the flight attendant stopped by to take their final drink orders. When he had ambled down the aisle to help others, Sarah put the magazine down and turned to Chuck. “What did you really talk to him about?”

“Software,” Chuck said, shrugging.

Suspicion cleared way for surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah, he was curious to see how things were in the software game—his words, not mine—and I think he tried to get me into a couple of cons, but Ellie didn’t raise no fool.” Chuck smiled at his own lame joke. “He was an interesting guy, your dad, after those first couple of minutes. I do have to ask one thing, though.”

“What?” Sarah asked warily.

“What the fractal is a ‘Schnook?’”

**27 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT**   
**21:47 EST**

“Okay, one more time, tell me what you’re going to do.”

“Stick close to your side at all times, alert you if I flash on anything, and if we get separated, activate the tracker on my watch. If my watch gets taken away, get to Union Station and hide out at the food court until you can come back to me,” Chuck said. He didn’t pinch the bridge of his nose, though he wanted to. The last thirty minutes of the flight had been a lecture and/or briefing from Sarah about all contingency plans that were in place, in case Fulcrum had discovered the aliases they had used in Phoenix. He’d spent the time actually watching her body slowly tense up, the muscles knit together, as she anticipated trouble at the DC airport. In response, everything in his own system had slowly gone loose and watery and jittery with a strange, disassociating sort of terror.

It appeared their brief respite in Arizona had now officially come to an end. Friend Sarah was on the backburner, replaced by an Agent Walker that had only the Intersect’s safety as a priority.

He followed her up the bridge between the plane and the airport and thought, upon entering the terminal: oh, crap. The vacation really is over.

None other than John Casey stood there waiting for them.

And he looked _pissed_.

**27 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**THE DC CROWN VIC**   
**23:03 EST**

“And to recap,” Casey finished, “if you _ever_ , ever do that again, Bartowski, I’m going to what?”

“Can I just use the highlights?” Chuck wondered dully.

Casey glared at him in the rearview mirror, and Chuck sighed. He began ticking points off on his fingers. One finger. “Wallop me so hard my great-great-great-great-grand—”

Casey cleared his throat.

“Fine. Great-great-great-great-great- _great_ -grandchildren will have bruises.” Chuck held up a second finger. “You’ll personally see to it that I get not only a tracker anklet, but a tracker bracelet, necklace, and stick up my ass as well.” Third finger. “You will personally ensure that every single Red Bull I drink is laced with nanobots.” A fourth finger. “There will be pain. Lots of pain. Which, I gotta say, Casey, you’ve used that one before so—”

Casey cleared his throat harder.

Chuck glared as his thumb joined the four fingers already held up. “Every, and these are your words, not mine, every idiot box, video system, moron game, geek computer in the Bachelor Pad will be summarily smashed and shredded, then mashed together and spoon-fed to me by a legion of angry ninjas that owe you a favor.”

“Damn straight,” Casey said.

“Sixth,” Chuck went on, switching to a new hand.

“We’re here,” Sarah interrupted, sitting up in the passenger seat. “Casey, that’s the driveway right there.”

“I see it, Walker, I see it.” Casey grumbled and looked at Chuck in the rearview mirror once more before he pulled his DC Crown Vic—discernable from the L.A. Crown Vic only because it was black instead of dark blue—into the driveway of a rather nice Georgian-style home. Most of the lights were out, given that it was almost midnight, and there weren’t many other houses in the neighborhood. In fact, it was mostly trees out here, which made it seem even darker around.

“This is where Gwen Davenport lives?” Chuck wondered, peering through the car windows at the house in front of them. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Let’s go.” 

They passed a BMW, a Jaguar, and a basketball hoop in the driveway as they made their way to the front porch, Casey leading, Sarah bringing up the rear. Chuck pondered briefly how they were going to get inside—did Casey have a key? Did they have free reign of the Davenport estate?—but the door opened just before they reached it and Gwen Davenport stepped out, automatically hugging her arms close to her body from the cold.

The last time Chuck had seen her had been during their negotiations to get an operation set up in Burbank for him. She had been all government agent, prim suit, hair in a bun, clean lines. Now, Chuck would never have guessed FBI agent because Gwen Davenport was wearing a long-sleeved tee and pajama pants, though he figured that was idiotic. Even FBI agents had to wear pajamas, didn’t they?

She smiled at the three of them. “Major Casey, I see you found them. Hello, Agent Walker, Chuck.”

“Ma’am,” Casey said, slipping past her to go inside. He shot a final threatening look over his shoulder at Chuck as he did so.

If it was going to take Casey awhile to get over Chuck telling Ellie about Operation Prometheus, it was going to take him years to get past Chuck’s little stunt with the Grand Canyon. Chuck could only be grateful that Sarah had let Casey get only one head-smack in before she had declared violence against the Intersect off-limits.

“Agent Davenport,” he said now, nervously.

“Please, Chuck, it’s Gwen. C’mon inside, it’s cold out here.”

And it was, too. The Grand Canyon had been cold with the snow and the wind from the high altitude, but it had seemed like a fleeting cold, an unnatural one. Here in DC, the world felt so frozen that Chuck was grateful Sarah had insisted on picking up warm coats for both of them.

He followed Sarah and Gwen into an entryway that seemed as homey and nice as the outside of the house had been. It almost looked like a show-house, all refined colors and dark, antique furniture that matched the floorboards underfoot. Gwen spoke even as she led them onward. “So this is my home, but for the next however long it takes, this is your home, too, and I want you to be comfortable. So, feel free to wander wherever you like, anything in the fridge is up for grabs, so on and so forth.”

Gwen led them through the parlor and by a tasteful living room with a huge flat-screen TV dominating half of an entire wall, and finally down a picture-lined hallway into a kitchen that spoke both of show-rooms and family summit meetings. There were photographs of children of various ages held to the fridge with magnets, what looked like schedules, flyers, fast food coupons, and everyday minutiae, but the appliances were sparkling clean and obviously expensive, professional-grade material. That concept should have clashed with the cookie jar on the counter in the shape of a dog wearing a basketball jersey, but somehow it seemed to fit.

“My husband designed the kitchen,” Gwen said, perhaps noticing that Chuck was staring. “He calls it his masterpiece. Too bad neither of us can cook worth beans.”

“Awesome,” Chuck said and swiveled his head away from the marble countertops. He wasn’t quite feeling shy, but the Davenport house had quite a lot of space, and he wasn’t sure what to think of that right now. Sarah’s presence at his side grounded him somewhat, but not enough. “Your, um, family’s okay with having a bunch of strange people coming to live with them like this?”

“With my son’s friends and my husband’s work associates, and the fact that, between Russ and me, we’re related to half of the eastern seaboard, the house is never empty.” Gwen’s smile seemed genuine, at least. “Also, if you can get my son to look away from his X-box and my daughter to look up from her cell phone, it’ll be a modern miracle. Are either of you hungry? I imagine you’ve have a long day.”

Both Chuck and Sarah had eaten on the plane, so they declined. “All right, then,” Gwen decided. “Seeing as you two are all but swaying on your feet, why don’t I show you where each of you will be staying?”

**28 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**DAVENPORT ESTATE GUEST ROOM**   
**00:08 EST**

Chuck’s room ended up being the attic, which had been refitted and redone into a guest bedroom. The house truly was a masterpiece, he thought as he set the suitcase of clothing bought at Waldbaum’s on the bed. Gwen claimed that it had nothing to do with her; her architect husband and an interior decorator were the geniuses behind the house looking as great as it did, as she had been too busy working since forever. Chuck would get to see the guest house where Sarah was staying with Awesome and Ellie the next day, as the latter two had already gone to bed.

Great, Chuck thought now, rubbing his hands over his hair, dodged that bullet until tomorrow. If Casey had had an hour-and-a-half-lecture for him, Ellie would certainly top it. And the bosses would top _that_.

He had no idea how long they were staying in DC, or what was being done to find out about their compromised covers in Burbank. From this standpoint, he knew very little outside of the fact that he had made Sarah cry, and Casey was pissed, and Ellie had been out of her mind with worry for him.

Chuck didn’t sit on the bed. Instead, he just sort of kept sliding until he was on the floor with his back against the bed, staring at the window opposite the door. Through it, he could see the moon, three-quarters full and waning, providing ample silver light across the trees around the Davenport estate. The room was nothing like his place in Burbank; it was old-fashioned in an appealing way, with antique furniture like the rest of the house, and the bed was smaller. Like his room in Burbank, it felt like a temporary place to crash.

Nothing had ever really felt like home since the bunker, but Burbank had been coming close.

Chuck rested the back of his head against the bed, closed his eyes, and just sat for a minute. His body felt like lead, or something heavier than that, each of his limbs dragging and drained. He tried to empty his mind, as he did every morning in his Tai Chi routines, or as he tried to do. An old conversation with Sarah came back to him, all the way from the bunker two years before, when she had guided him through the first routine and he had stumbled along like an idiot.

_So, am I supposed to be feeling at one with the universe right now?_

_I never feel at one with the universe._

And now, two years later, they had finally come to DC. Well, he reminded himself, come to DC again. They had been in DC together before, but they had both been behind bars, and then Sarah had been shipped off to set up the operation in Burbank, the one that was now potentially in flames because Chuck had stumbled on a Fulcrum cell, with explosively disastrous results. If he had been ten minutes earlier or later in delivering that letter, would he have crossed paths with the doomed Lawrence? Would all of this have eventually blown up in his face if he’d continued to pursue this Jill angle?

_You’ll go crazy, playing ‘what if,’ and ‘what if that hadn’t happened?’ You have to accept that what happened, happened._

Chuck closed his eyes. Even with Sarah’s words ringing through his head, threatening to overpower reason and logic and emotion, he saw the shocked look on Jill’s face as she tumbled to the ground, and the way Leader’s own blood had dripped off of the knife in his hand, each individual droplet catching the dusty light of the much-ventilated office before it tumbled to the carpet. He saw Leader fall to his knees in absurdly slow motion, as though somebody kept rapidly pressing pause and play on the world.

He saw the final Fulcrum thug hit the sand in the desert as Sarah dropped him.

He saw Jill’s face, bled of all of its color just like her body was bleeding of all of its life-force. He saw Sarah kneeling in the aftermath, fingering a bullet-hole.

Chuck hit the back of his head against the side of the bed, but it did nothing to make any of the images go away. He did it again anyway. He had barely let himself think about a thing at the Grand Canyon for fear that exactly this would happen, and when he was with Sarah, it was like there was a magical buffer between him and all of the horrors experienced at the Heartbrake Hotel. With her gone, the buffer had once more receded to the corners of his mind.

He had killed a man.

He had saved his own life, Ellie’s voice, his conscience, pointed out.

His hand had made the killing blow before Sarah’s could.

Leader had been trying to kill _him_. Ellie’s voice again, firmer now. Upset at him, Chuck thought almost wryly, for not listening to her.

Damn was he going to be in trouble with her tomorrow morning at breakfast.

Chuck climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling, not bothering to change into pajamas. It wasn’t like he was going to sleep anyway, not with all of these nightmarish memories to keep him awake.

He was asleep the instant his head hit the pillow.

**28 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**LANGLEY HEADQUARTERS**   
**08:11 EST**

The lack of Tai Chi in his morning routine (Casey hadn’t roused him in time), as well as the fact that neither Sarah nor Casey would let him shave off the few days of stubble that was now on its way to officially becoming a beard in case they needed to change his appearance, made Chuck feel a bit out of sorts as he walked through the front doors of Langley for the first time in his five and a half years of being an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency.

They were supposed to report in at 0800 to the bosses for the first briefing, but they had been delayed at the gate by the guards that wanted to double-check Casey’s Crown Vic and the necessary permits that went with said automobile. Chuck could only be grateful that they hadn’t brought the Burbank version, which was probably getting kitted out with a rocket launcher even now.

To say that he felt nervous was an understatement. He felt frozen and overheated and vaguely itchy, and like his suit didn’t fit quite right, even though it had been one from his own closet back in Burbank, not-so-lovingly packed by Casey himself. Chuck wanted this day to be _over_. He wanted to get the lecture from the bosses over, as he’d already weathered the Ellie version, which involved tears, and a repeated, “Thank God, you’re okay!” and other things that made him feel even guiltier than he had before going to sleep.

The conversation with the bosses wouldn’t go anything like that. He was almost fairly certain General Beckman had never uttered the words “Thank God, you’re okay!” in her life.

“Stand up straight,” Sarah muttered under her breath, but she gave him a sympathetic look right before a young woman in a business suit hurried up to the three of them quickly enough that Casey automatically reached for the holster at his side. She was holding a stack of glossy folders, which she scanned right before she came up to the group.

“Agent Lynch?” she asked. “Agent Lynch, Agent Lynch, and…” She checked the third folder in her hands and glanced at Casey. “Major Lynch?”

The three core members of Operation Prometheus stared. Chuck was the first to break the silence. “I knew a Lynch once—oof!”

Casey had elbowed him in the stomach.

“That’s us,” Sarah said, stepping between the woman and her teammates. She shot a brief death glare over her shoulder. “Can I help you, Agent…?”

“Weier. Vespa Weier.” The woman, still perky, shuffled folders to shake Sarah’s hand. “And you must be Agent Lynch.”

“Which one?” Chuck deadpanned, and dodged the elbow to the gut.

Vespa Weier was undeterred by that, though. “Agent Karrin Lynch,” she said, either not recognizing sarcasm or just ignoring it altogether. “And I’m guessing you’re the other Agent Lynch—Agent Cameron Lynch?” She handed Sarah and Chuck folders, and held a third out to Casey. “Which makes you Major Barnabas Lynch.”

Casey, Sarah, and Chuck all blinked at that one. Chuck opened his mouth to comment, but Casey made a noise that was frightening precisely because it wasn’t a noise; it could probably only be heard by small dogs and other such creatures. Chuck’s mouth snapped shut.

“Glad to see that NCS has the same sense of humor as ever,” Sarah said dryly.

Vespa Weier, to her credit, grinned at that. “Of course. I’m on hand from the DNI to assist you three with whatever you need today. Those are your schedules, and they’re pretty airtight, unfortunately, what with Agent Lynch—”

“Which one?” Chuck deadpanned again, only this time he wasn’t fast enough to dodge.

“Agent _Cameron_ Lynch,” Vespa Weier said without missing a beat, “having to split his time between Langley and Fort Meade.”

“Wait a second.” A frown line appeared between Sarah’s eyebrows. She held her hand out for the other folders and Chuck and Casey handed them over without a word. Sarah flipped through each of the folders, the frown deepening. She scanned Casey’s folder last and unceremoniously held the stack out toward Vespa Weier, shaking her head. “This isn’t going to work.”

“What? Why not?” Real alarm crossed Vespa Weier’s face.

“One of us has to remain with Agent Ly—Agent Cameron Lynch at all times.” When Vespa Weier looked like she might protest, Sarah’s look hardened. “It’s not negotiable.”

“Oh.” Vespa Weier looked like somebody had taken the wind out of her sails. “Very well. I’ll write up new schedules while the three of you are speaking with General Beckman and Director Graham. It would be my pleasure to do so.”

Chuck’s eyebrows rose as Vespa Weier practically stalked off, her kitten heels ringing on the tiles. “Sounds like you’ve made a new enemy, and in your own agency, too,” he whispered to Sarah.

Sarah just shook her head and smiled. “Hopefully the bosses won’t be too upset that she waylaid us,” she said, mostly to Casey. 

“Oh, yeah, they won’t be upset at all.” Casey rolled his eyes and clamped a hand on Chuck’s arm above the elbow. “March, soldier. Lesson one, never keep the bigwigs waiting. They hate it.”

“I don’t think that’s exactly my fault,” Chuck protested as he was led deeper into the CIA’s headquarters, flanked by his Prometheus teammates in a way that either spoke of comfort or prison.

Casey rolled his eyes. “It would be the _one_ thing they’d be upset about that isn’t.”

That didn’t make Chuck feel a whole lot better about things.

**28 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**LANGLEY HEADQUARTERS CONFERENCE ROOM**   
**10:10 EST**

“And how are we doing on the other objective of Operation Prometheus?”

It was very unnerving, Chuck discovered, when your bosses barely looked up from a legal pad during an hour-plus-long briefing. He’d thought it was disconcerting to be face-to-face with a Brigadier General and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, but that feeling had nothing on the sensation of staring at the top of Langston Graham’s head for over forty-five minutes while Sarah or Casey talked, and Graham scribbled. General Beckman, at least, could be counted on to keep up appearances; she had been frowning dourly at Chuck throughout the whole briefing, as if he were a particularly annoying fly buzzing around the room, or her personal problem to be dealt with later.

He’d done his best to keep his mouth shut. He was under no illusions here: the patented Bartowski ramble _would_ get him into hot water.

Still, right now he almost asked, “Other objective?”

Sarah, who’d been seated to his left at the long conference table, the same one that was empty apart from the three Prometheus agents, the CIA Director, and General Beckman, answered before Chuck could, “I’ve put out feelers, hoping to entice Agent Larkin to come in willingly.”

Agent Larkin? Oh, right. In his preoccupation with Jill and Lawrence’s cell phone, Chuck had completely forgotten that Sarah had been tasked with locating Bryce. He didn’t dare glance at her now to see what she thought about it. She’d been maintaining that cool Agent Walker—or was it Agent Lynch?—façade throughout the entire briefing, just like Casey had on his unreadable Major Casey persona. Of course, that one was pretty much normal.

“And how successful, Agent Walker, do you feel these ‘feelers’ will be?” Langston Graham looked up now, mostly to peel off his reading glasses.

Sarah didn’t waver. “I’m fairly certain they’ll be successful. Agent Larkin and I did have a working relationship for a number of years.”

Chuck frowned. How could he have completely forgotten about that? It’s complicated, Sarah had said. But if Sarah had been with Bryce, what on earth was she doing looking at a guy like—Sarah kicked his ankle under the table, and he had to fight everything not to jolt. Belatedly, he realized that his “at attention” face had turned to a vicious scowl, and shifted back to his previous expression. 

“Very well. You’ll keep us updated on your progress.”

“Naturally.”

“And that brings us to,” General Beckman said, speaking up for the first time in awhile, “the tertiary objective of Operation Prometheus. The hunt for Fulcrum. I’m sure the most recent developments on this objective ought to be…enlightening.”

It truly was fascinating, Chuck thought, how she could say “Explain. Now,” without actually _voicing_ the words. He almost outright asked her, until he realized that the silence had stretched for an unnaturally long time, and that everybody assembled at the table in the otherwise bland conference room was looking at him expectantly.

“Me?” he asked, just to be sure. “You want me to, uh, enlighten everybody?”

Sarah leaned in close to mutter, “Start with the raid on Sergei Ezersky and try not to use the words ‘robo-rabbit.’”

Later on, Chuck decided, they would really have to discuss how unhelpful Sarah’s advice could be. Sweating, he turned to face the bosses, neither of whom was looking at a legal pad now. He found himself regretting that.

“When General Beckman faxed over the list of Fulcrum suspects, we opted to focus on Sergei Ezersky first, given that his work in cybernetics and robotics could be highly beneficial to a group like Fulcrum. However, since Mr. Ezersky had, uh, the security system from hell protecting all of his information, a little creativity was required, so we broke into his estate to gather intel from his personal computer. It,” Chuck said, searching for a way to describe the night of the earthquake, and being chased by rabbit-like machines through a mansion, “went a little less than spectacularly, but we were successful in grabbing ninety-nine percent of the data off of Ezersky’s computer.”

He took a drink from the water glass in front of him, mostly to wet his terrified throat. Another droplet of sweat slid between his shoulder blades.

“Unfortunately, the missing one percent of information contained a key line of code that was required to actually break the security on the drive. I was unaware of this until my computer matched that line to another device that was, ah, lifted from what was definitely a Fulcrum agent. So I can say without a doubt that Sergei Ezersky is Fulcrum, and that the organization is likely using an algorithm created by his company to secure their phones and possibly their transmissions.

“As to what the hell Fulcrum is?” Chuck shrugged. “Still don’t have the first clue in hell, but my ex is a member.”

“You’ll have to forgive Bartowski,” Casey said, quickly leaning forward. “He’s an idi—”

“He’s under a lot of stress,” Sarah interrupted, shooting death glares at her teammates. And then she began to explain everything that had happened to the team over the past week, starting with Chuck lifting the phone from Lawrence on Thanksgiving and not stopping until she had found Chuck at the Grand Canyon the day before, trading off the story with Casey as necessary, and even a few comments from Chuck that weren’t precisely welcome, judging by the fact that Sarah’s hand twitched every time he spoke up.

Halfway through the recital of events, Graham began tapping the eraser of his pencil against the varnished tabletop. Beckman folded her arms over her chest.

“So if I’m to understand all of this,” Graham said once Sarah had finished, “the three of you uncovered a Fulcrum cell simply because Bartowski was stalking his ex-girlfriend.”

Sarah didn’t quite know what to say to that, judging by the mystified look she shot at Chuck and Casey. The latter shrugged. The former said nothing. The recital of events had proved one thing to him: he really was the idiot Casey claimed he was. Why the hell hadn’t he told Casey or Sarah about that damned phone?

“Yes,” he said, surprising even himself as he spoke. “That’s exactly what happened.”

“I see.” Graham’s face abruptly creased into a frown that boded no good for the three sitting across from him. He slowly rose to his feet. “If that’s the case, why the hell did we bother training _any_ of you? It sounds like we can just let the three of you wander all over Los Angeles until you find a damned problem to fix! This is not how the Central Intelligence Agency works, agents!”

Chuck wanted to sink into his seat, but he sat with his back ramrod straight.

“What the hell do you have to say for yourselves?” Graham went on, his cold gaze sweeping the entire team. “Bartowski? This is on you. You got anything to say?”

“With all due respect, sir,” Sarah said, leaning forward slightly, “but Agent Bartowski is a member of my team, and his actions reflect back on all of us. I take just as much blame in these events.”

Casey opened his mouth, perhaps to grunt, remembered himself, and said, “Seconded.”

This was apparently the wrong tactic to take. Graham’s scowl darkened further, and the sourpuss on Beckman’s face increased as well. “This is not a committee!” Graham thundered. “You screwed the pooch on this one! I’ve got the FBI making very uncomfortable inquiries into a shoot-out in the middle of damned no man’s land, I’ve got agents deciding they can take a nice little vacation in the middle of a serious situation, and to make things worse, I’ve got to deal with the clean-up of an operation in Burbank that I can see was unwise to grant you in the first place, if this is what you do with it! I don’t have time to deal with this sort of bullshit from the three of you, I have an agency to run and I don’t need to be running around cleaning up your mess all the damned time!”

Forget sink into his chair, Chuck thought. He wanted to sink into the floor. There didn’t seem to be a good place in the room to stare, so he forced himself to meet Graham’s eyes. Next to him, Sarah was so tightly wound she was practically vibrating, and Casey had developed a thousand-yard stare that would make any marine drill instructor proud.

“If any of you, _any_ of you, ever pulls a stunt like this ever again, I will have you stripped of your rank, sent through every obstacle course on the Farm, painted bright pink, and set on the CIA driving range with a sign that says ‘Twenty points for every hit.’” Graham’s furious gaze swept all of them. “And if _that_ doesn’t work, I will personally take you all through jump training without so much as a parachute, and you had better hope you learn how to fucking fly before now and then. Are we understood?”

“Yes, sir.” The chorus was ragged; Chuck was half a step behind his teammates, but they all spoke fervently.

“Good.” Graham straightened to his full height and crossed his arms over his chest. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an agency to run. General Beckman can take it from here.”

And he walked out, leaving the room ringing in his wake. Chuck didn’t dare breathe. He wasn’t sure if Casey or Sarah were breathing either, and he was too afraid to ask. He hadn’t expected that sort of outright fury. And that had been a very oddly specific rant.

Though he wondered in the only part of his mind that wasn’t stunned stupid or hysterical, what Casey would look like painted bright pink.

“Very well.” General Beckman’s voice cut through the silence, and Chuck snapped back to reality, to face her unsmiling mien. She folded her arms on the table in front of her in a way that let Chuck know that, though they might not get such a forceful dressing down from her, she was just as displeased as her counterpart. She eyed them narrowly. “Let’s go over everything that happened, step by step. And don’t leave any details out.”


	38. A Day in the Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many times a day I realize how much my own life is built upon the labors of my fellowmen, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. — _Albert Einstein_

**28 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**DIGITAL DAVE’S DEN**   
**11:39 EST**

Chuck led the way into the computer labs belonging to the CIA tech department. Some called it the Department of Science and Technology, but only in reports and never to each other. Most of the building, Chuck included, just called it Digital Dave’s Den. Further, very few people actually knew Digital Dave’s last name; he simply went by his nickname. At least, he’d told Chuck during a conference call to the bunker a year before, while Chuck had been remote assisting on a tech problem, his name actually _was_ Dave, so the nickname wasn’t too bad.

Chuck had let Sarah or Casey lead the way through the headquarters, but descending into the basement here, he took over by instinct, ignoring Vespa Weier’s protests. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been here before; these were computers, this was his world. They’d picked up their perky, annoying assistant right after their meeting. This time, she was armed with schedules that were much more copacetic to Sarah’s wishes, so there hadn’t been a battle of the female CIA agents. But it did mean that the Lynch jokes, amusing until Langston Graham had torn the team a new one, were now back in full swing. They weren’t as funny now.

Graham’s threats had put a damper on the whole team. It was like the color had been leeched from them. Casey still kept his military bearing, and Sarah’s expression was as unreadable as ever, but Chuck couldn’t help but think there was just a tinge at the edges of the team, just a hint of something that wasn’t quite depression but came close. Team Bartowski had its collective tail between its legs now.

He tried to put the threats out of his mind as he moved into the computer lab, flashing the access badge absently at the guards stationed at the front desk. Graham should have been yelling at him and him alone. Sarah shouldn’t have stood up for him like that. 

He walked through the rows of desks in the main lab, manned by geeks and nerds. Some of the desks were islands of neatness, tidily and ruthlessly organized, but the trend ran toward the messy down here, nests of snarled wires and spare parts covering most of the flat surfaces, sharing space with empty energy drink cans and fast food wrappers. The walls were painted a soothing beige, and there weren’t any windows, not that it mattered. Most of the techs working in the lab were staring at their screens, blissfully zoned out on whatever project was occupying their thoughts.

“It’s like a den full of Bartowskis,” Casey muttered under his breath, thankfully too quiet for the trailing Vespa Weier to hear. “Ye gods, spare me.”

Chuck rolled his eyes. Sarah gave no discernable reaction.

Digital Dave’s office was one of the six main offices in the complex dedicated to “Field Resources.” The Agency could do with a lot more than six dedicated techs, Chuck knew, which was why Sarah and Bryce had been green-lighted on adding him as dedicated tech support to their wonder-team, despite his unorthodox location. Digital Dave was the best of the six in the office, which meant he was also the most overworked.

Indeed, he didn’t look up when Chuck tapped on his door jamb. “Two seconds,” he said, hunching his shoulders further and tapping away at his keyboard without pause.

“We’ll wait,” Sarah said from behind Chuck.

Digital Dave’s head came up. “Agent Walker! Hey! What brings a high and mighty field agent into our humble offices?”

“That would be my fault,” Chuck said.

Dave’s eyes refocused on him. “Chuck!” He seemed genuinely pleased to see Chuck, which was a switch, given that Chuck’s phone calls to the den usually inspired more work. “Hey! Cool, you’re here. Wait two seconds.” And just like that, he went back to working on whatever he was trying to tackle.

Chuck turned to Casey and Sarah with a puzzled look on his face. “Am I that bad?” he asked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at Dave. 

“You’re worse,” Casey grumbled. “I’m going to take Agent Weier here for a coffee and remind her of the things she needs to forget before Dave blows all of our covers. See you at the front door in twenty minutes?”

Chuck and Sarah promised him that they would.

“Don’t be late,” Casey said, with one final scowl before he left, herding their assistant-for-the-day away despite her protests that she was scheduled to remain with all three teammates for this allotted time.

Chuck and Sarah waved as they left.

“Is she going to be a permanent fixture in DC?” Chuck wondered. “Because even I’m tired of ‘Which Lynch?’ jokes already, and that has to be a record.”

“You could just not tell the joke,” Sarah pointed out, smiling a little wanly as she leaned against the door jamb to Dave’s office.

Chuck, since it looked like Dave was going to be wrapped up in the project for longer than the afore-promised two seconds, leaned against the opposite jamb and crossed his arms over his chest. “That would be impossible when she leaves an opening wide enough to drive the Crown Vic through.”

“Ah well. Can’t say I didn’t try.”

At the keyboard, Dave gave a fist-pump that made both agents look over. “Take that, bitches,” he mumbled around the pencil clenched in his teeth, and tapped a few keys with finality. Without double-checking his work, he rose to his feet and joined the agents at the door. “How long do I have Chuck for?” he asked Sarah.

She checked her watch. “Fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll make do. Follow me.” Dave pulled the pencil from between his teeth and automatically put it over his ear. He was almost as tall as Chuck, but he carried his mass on a husky frame. His hair, eyebrows, and beard were as red as a fire engine, and he had a pair of rectangular glasses perched on the end of his nose, mostly forgotten. His uniform seemed to consist of a never-ending stream of front-pocket polo shirts and khakis, unless he was being called up in front of a committee or something. Then, Chuck imagined, he probably put on a suit. But to get a technical mind like Dave’s, the CIA had to make some allowances.

He led Chuck and Sarah deeper into the tech den, and Chuck was only grateful that he and Sarah both had the highest clearances, otherwise security would have shown up to shoot both of them by now. They passed more geeks hard at work, huddled in front of screens or working on devices in various stages of tech destruction, the electronic innards of many devices splayed over workspaces. 

“So we’ve been playing around with that Fulcrum code from that cloned hard drive, the Ezersky one,” Dave said as he led Chuck and Sarah deep into the heart of the den, a workstation office where every surface was literally covered with computers or spare parts. The doorway had an old, crinkled sign attached to the door with yellowed scotch tape that read, “Dave Cave: Enter And Risk Being Assimilated.” It was quite a bit less chaotic than the surrounding desks and labs. “And it’s a doozy of a coding nightmare. No wonder it took you over a week to crack.”

“Don’t remind me,” Chuck grumbled.

“We didn’t have the luxury of stumbling over a missing cell phone with the same security algorithms, so I’ve had a few of my best guys building the missing code from scratch.” Dave shot a grin over his shoulder to lessen the harshness of his words. “But since you’ve got a couple of minutes, do you think you could take a look at what they’ve got, see if you can compare it to anything you remember?”

“The cell phone code files should be saved to my home computer,” Chuck mused.

“Really?” Dave perked up. “Is there any way we can get that here?”

As one, Chuck and Dave turned to look at Sarah. She barely blinked as she pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll make the call. It’ll take a minute, so Dave, don’t let Chuck out of your sight, okay?”

After she strolled away, Dave turned to Chuck with both eyebrows raised.

“Yes. I have handlers now,” Chuck said, barely suppressing a sigh. “Or partners. Whatever you call them. The Fulcrum thing with the codes, it kind of blew up in our faces, and so now I’m being watched at all times. Sarah in particular is being paranoid. It’ll ease off.”

“Oh, yes,” Dave said, his tone utterly dry. “That sounds like a horrible fate, to be watched all the time by the legendary Agent Walker.”

“Shut up,” Chuck said, grinning. “Now where’s that code you wanted me to take a look at?”

He almost didn’t see Sarah return from making her phone call, so wrapped up was he in deciphering the code and its possibilities with Dave. But he still noted that she slipped into the room and stood off to the side of the door, waiting patiently in agent mode with her hands behind her back. It was completely different from the way she would sit or lean in the office back in Burbank, waiting for him to finish whatever computer problem he was trying to tackle. Just another difference between DC and Burbank, he thought.

“There’s a possibility of a backdoor virus,” Dave said. “I’m reporting directly to Graham on this one, and he wants me to create something handheld that will let his agents disable the security remotely, but I’m also working on a secondary virus.”

“The coding’s pretty tight,” Chuck said, frowning at the lines on the screen. “If you’re going the backdoor virus route, you risk alerting the sysadmin and creating direct access to your own servers. Whoever created this, they’re not exactly minor leagues.”

Dave’s grin almost redefined cocky. “And what about the CIA says minor leagues?”

“Point,” Chuck said, shaking his head.

“So I cleared an hour or two hour for you tomorrow to work with my team,” Dave said, hitting a button on the keyboard and making the code vanish entirely. “If your computer’s not here in time, we’ll get you your own setup down here. Probably in here, actually.” Dave looked around the Dave Cave as if he had never seen it before, and the organized soul inside of Chuck nearly wept at the thought. “Or maybe somewhere else. But you’ve got a battle axe guarding your schedule in Vespa Weier, did you know that? The last time I had to fill out so many forms, it was Take Your Daughter to Work Day, and Kaylee accidentally set off a high-powered laser we had in development in the cafeteria and blew up the soup of the day.”

“Really?” 

“Yeah, it was Wednesday, too.”

“Chili,” Sarah said knowingly, speaking up for the first time since she’d returned.

Dave grinned. “They’re still cleaning it out of the ceiling vents. But it’ll be neat having your brain on the team for a little while, Chuck. Things were getting a little too orthodox down here.”

“I’m really not sure what that says about your team,” Chuck said. Since he caught Sarah glancing at her watch, he cleared his throat. “Is our time up?”

“Just about.” She gave Dave an apologetic look. “Busy day. Sorry, Dave.”

“Don’t worry about it.”’

“One thing: you’ll have to call me Agent Lynch until further notice. And unless your people know Chuck by his name already, he’s Agent Lynch, too.”

“Either NCS developed a sense of humor, or you’re supposed to be married,” Dave surmised, and Chuck choked on nothing. Dave gave him a puzzled look, but Chuck waved it off, so Dave continued. “All right. I’ll inform my men that ‘Agent Lynch’ will be joining the team. I didn’t tell them Chuck was coming. Didn’t want to get their hopes up until I was absolutely sure.”

“But no pressure,” Chuck said, and coughed to clear his throat. As he did so, he noticed something off to the side of Dave’s desk, half-buried under a pile of USB cords. It was a barette with a sparkly butterfly on it, the clip halfway cut through by what looked like wire-cutters, leaving a small hollow cup inside the barette where it looked like something had been removed. The clip looked vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t place it.

Dave spotted the object of his interest. “Oh, right, check it out. This toy just got here Monday. Next generation tracker.” In his excitement, he jerked on Chuck’s arm, pulling the other man over to a station with a vise grip and a magnifying lens. Chuck tensed, but the other man had let go by then. “Check out the detailing on this baby. Masterful, right?”

“I think we really need to go,” Sarah said from the door.

Chuck flashed her his best wheedling grin. “Just one more minute?” he asked.

She looked doubtful, but she sighed. “It’s on you if we’re late to meet Casey.”

“Got it.”

“And he’s pissed at you already.”

Chuck didn’t bother to argue that one, since she was right. Instead, he just tilted the magnifying lens to get a clearer look at the tracker, curious to see if the circuitry was as beautiful as Dave claimed.

The flash caught him off-guard, but that wasn’t unusual.

Stop-motion footage of two pigtailed girls on a swing set.

KROLIK ENTERPRISES.

A detailed floor-plan of a very high-tech building, multiple egress points and data security failsafes.

World War II-style photograph of a soldier cleaning his gun while his friend laughed in the background.

PRODUCT DESIGN: EM-50. Schematics, designs for a burst-mode tracker, lightweight, two millimeter diameter, subdermal options. Rechargeable. Seventeen day battery life.

Serial numbers, patent requests, forms and inventories of products needed for the EM-50 Subdermal Locator.

The photograph of the laughing soldier and his serious friend again.

A press release for Krolik Enterprises on a fairly recent product launch for an unrelated in-car GPS system. A shot of the CEO of Krolik Enterprises glad-handing it with the product designer, mugging for the camera.

The girls on the swing-set again, smiling.

Chuck blinked a couple of times, heavily. “Interesting,” he managed to say in an almost-normal tone. “I’ve seen this before.”

“You have?” Dave sounded genuinely surprised. “Where?”

“I don’t think it’s the same generation, but—can I use your computer?” When Dave simply gestured in a “have at it” sort of way, Chuck called up the national patent registry and typed in “Krolik Enterprises.” It took him some scrolling, but he didn’t want to input the patent registration number directly and rouse Dave’s suspicions. He wasn’t the one in the room with the damn near perfect memory, after all. It took a few seconds, but he found it, and turned the screen to show Dave.

“The EM-50?” Dave asked, looking at the tracker through the lens. He whistled lowly. “Interesting. You’ve gotten farther in less than two minutes than any of my guys have in two days, Chuck. Seriously impressive. I’ll do some research on this.”

“No problem,” Chuck said weakly, fighting the urge to rub his temple with his fingers. As he did so, he spotted that odd butterfly barette that had held the tracker. Something about it niggled in his brain. He didn’t have time to puzzle it out, though, since Sarah touched his arm, a signal that it was definitely time to go. “See you tomorrow, Dave.”

“Catch ya later, Chuck,” Dave said without looking up from the computer screen. 

Sarah remained quiet while they wound their way through Dave’s department, but the minute they were beyond the security desks out front, she glanced at him. “What’d you flash on?” 

“Something in the design, I think.” Chuck summed up the flash.

“Krolik?” Sarah asked, just to be sure, when he had finished.

“Yeah, why?”

“Um, it’s Russian for ‘rabbit.’”

“Coincidence?” Chuck asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“So a Russian guy we know now is Fulcrum because I hacked his security on a confirmed Fulcrum agent’s phone makes rabbit-shaped robots, and there’s a next generation tracker the CIA has never seen produced by a company that just happens to be named the Russian word for rabbit,” Chuck surmised. “Yeah, definitely not a coincidence.”

“You think?” Sarah asked, but she was smiling.

“How did we get a Fulcrum tracker?” Chuck asked.

If he wasn’t always hyper-aware of everything Sarah did these days, ever since _Just say the word, Chuck_ had turned his head upside down and his world inside-out, he might not have caught it. But Sarah’s eyes cut down and to the left, just a flicker, just once. And Chuck knew.

“Jill was wearing butterfly barettes in her hair,” he said, his voice hollow. “That’s how those Fulcrum guys found us. They tracked us using the EM-50. Jill brought them right to us.”

Sarah’s hand, the one closest to him, flexed a little bit, as if she wanted to pat his arm or grab his hand but wasn’t sure. She gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, Chuck.”

Chuck just shook his head. “It’s not your fault. She put her faith in these people and they were just using it to come…clean things up.” To kill her, he thought, trying his hardest not to think of the look on Jill’s face as she had tumbled to the floor in the musty, disgusting office of the Heartbrake Hotel.

They continued to walk along, silently, through the headquarters of the CIA, going down hallways Chuck didn’t recognize but Sarah apparently did. She eyed him a time or two as they walked, but Chuck kept his head down. 

“I called the hospital this morning,” Sarah said as they approached the main entrance where Casey and Vespa Weier awaited them. “They said there were some complications with some of the stitches ripping, but she’s going to be all right, in the long run.”

“Great,” Chuck said without feeling. “And she’s going to talk?”

“She’s already come clean, and they’re launching an investigation into the matter. Her testimony wasn’t much, but every bit we know about Fulcrum now means more that we can do to keep you safe.” This time, Sarah seemed to give into the impulse; she rubbed her hand along Chuck’s sleeve, and he swore he felt her warmth through the layers of cloth. “Give me some kind of clue here, Chuck. Where’s your head at with this Jill situation?”

Chuck moved a shoulder in a half-shrug.

Sarah gave him an exasperated look.

“I’m not a trained dog,” he pointed out as they crossed the foyer, letting his irritation color his words. It wasn’t fair to her, and he knew that, but he couldn’t and didn’t want to stop himself. They headed toward Casey and Vespa Weier. “You can’t just say ‘Speak!’ and I’ll start yapping out emotion.”

“Why not?” Casey asked, rising from the bench by the front door. He buttoned his suit jacket. “Always seemed to work before.”

“You two are a riot,” Chuck decided, as Sarah gave Casey an annoyed look. “Let’s go see what shiny things the NSA has in store for us.”

Nobody argued with that, but Vespa Weier did seem pleased that, for once, they were going to stick to her precise schedules. 

**28 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**NSA HEADQUARTERS, FORT MEADE, MARYLAND**   


**14:08 EST**

“Feels like old times,” Chuck joked weakly to Casey.

The other man ignored him with the ease of practice, as he was busy listening to the earpiece that Vespa Weier had handed him before they had smuggled Chuck into the building. 

At the CIA headquarters, Agent Lynch was just another faceless CIA analyst—Agent Cameron Lynch that was, as Agent Karrin Lynch made for a very poor analyst when she could have found better-paying work as a model—but Chuck’s cover for the NSA was that of tech support until they got through the first set of security checks. After that, Chuck’s identity became unimportant: Casey had stuffed a cloth bag over his head, and Sarah and Casey had guided him to the testing labs, where all surveillance was disabled for the day, and Chuck once again became Patient X, Intersect subject alpha. During the two weeks between being on the run with Sarah and landing in Burbank to kick off Operation Prometheus, Chuck and Casey had gone through this routine almost daily. The crack NSA team of scientists would be able to read Chuck’s brain-waves and physiological signs without seeing him, for his own protection.

Chuck knew Sarah was in with those scientists now, serving as the liaison for the group. She hadn’t spoken much on the way over to Fort Meade, and Chuck didn’t blame her.

He’d have to apologize soon. He just wasn’t ready to deal with it yet, though.

“Old times, Chuck?” Ellie asked. She was wearing an NSA badge just like his own, though she was Army Major Nelson, something she and Chuck had already bantered about for a full five minutes, and she was observing Casey as he went through the motions of setting up the monitors around Chuck for the scientists. “They’ve put you through this before?”

“Quite a few times.” Chuck sighed when Casey pulled out the helmet. “I hate that thing.”

“Tough,” Casey said.

“At least let me put it on by myself this time. You always shove it on and it pinches and—ow.” Chuck glared as the helmet was unceremoniously forced onto his head. “I’m going to have helmet hair.”

“I can hear the fashion gods crying already.”

Ellie rolled her eyes sympathetically at her brother. She hadn’t quite warmed up to John Casey’s gruff ways yet.

Chuck managed a feeble grin. He could practically feel Ellie’s excitement coloring the air. She had spent the morning going through her NSA orientation, as she would for the next few days, but her afternoons were free to observe Chuck as he went through another round of Intersect testing. Sometimes, with all of her popular friends and lifestyle, he forgot that Ellie could be just as nerdy as he was. She’d aced medical school, after all, and she liked old-school science fiction like _The Twilight Zone_ , so of course the Intersect would be interesting to her.

And this would be the first time she would get to see it in action. Chuck could understand her excitement.

The testing room was large, as it was meant for quite a few more people than just Casey, Ellie, and Chuck. It was also very bright, overly lit, and very white. There were medical tools that Chuck tried not to think about arranged in various cabinets around the room’s edges, and a surgical gurney located under a set of lights in the middle of the room. Thankfully, though, he didn’t have to lie in this for the Intersect tests. They had set up just an ordinary office swivel chair in the middle of the room for him, hooked up to the monitors already. It was starkly black against the white room, and it lacked cupholders, which Chuck felt was a major drawback because otherwise, it was comfortable. His throat inevitably got very dry during these sessions, as they asked endless questions and did word associations to figure out exactly how he processed the flashes.

Chuck only sat still while Casey attached nodes to the helmet because he knew moving would only make Casey grouchier. “How was your orientation?” he asked Ellie, careful not to move his head. “Did they walk you through how to say ‘I’d tell you, but then I would have to kill you’ in five different languages?”

“I wish.” Ellie smiled. “Paperwork.”

“Yeah, they tend to bury you in that the first couple of days,” Sarah said, and both Bartowski siblings jolted.

Casey rolled his eyes. “Did _both_ of you forget you were wearing earpieces?” he asked, looking from one Bartowski to the other.

Ellie waited until Casey had turned his back on her before she narrowed her eyes at him, rather childishly. Chuck had to fight a grin. “It wasn’t nice of you to warn Ellie not to bring a shovel,” he said to the absent Sarah.

He could almost hear her shrug. “Agency hazing. That traitor is NSA now, she’s on her own.”

Ellie snickered as Casey growled under his breath and Chuck choked back a laugh.

Immediately, the earpiece line buzzed. “Patient X,” Dr. Zarnow said, coming onto the line. Chuck recognized his voice because he was the only scientist that had ever bothered to identify himself. “Is something amiss? We’ve noted a spike in your vital signs.”

“That would be Agent Lynch’s fault,” Casey said, his tone almost gleeful.

“My apologies, Doctor Zarnow.” Sarah’s tone was professional, but Chuck thought he could detect a promise of retribution to Casey in her words. He glanced at Casey now without moving his head, as the NSA agent was busily attaching the last wires to the helmet. Casey was smirking.

It figured.

“I will do my best not to affect Patient X for the rest of the test,” Sarah went on, and the line fell silent.

Chuck glanced questioningly at Casey. “Can they hear everything we’re saying in the control room right now?”

“Not unless Wal—Lynch presses a button.” Casey finished attaching the final wire and then crouched to get a look at his handiwork. “I think we’re all set in here.” He glanced at Ellie, sighed to himself, and crossed to the side of the room. He returned with two folding chairs, both of which he set up while the Bartowskis watched him in silence. Once he had finished with that, Casey gestured a bit impatiently for Ellie to sit down.

“What happens now?” she asked. Since she was looking at Casey, Chuck figured he’d let the NSA agent field that one, since Chuck’s own explanation included phrases like, “Now my brain explodes, but in a _fun_ way.” Granted, there was usually sarcasm involved.

Indeed, Casey seemed amused. “We watch ‘Patient X’ over there spit out government secrets in the name of science. It’s actually boring from this end, but the nerds in the control room go nuts over it. Sometimes there’s popcorn.”

The earpiece buzzed again. “Patient X,” Dr. Zarnow said, “are you ready to begin?”

Chuck confirmed that he was, and kicked back in the swivel chair, idly wishing there was a foot stool. At least this time they hadn’t hooked him up to lie-detector equipment, as that meant actually being strapped to the chair. Now he simply had the brain-helmet, a couple of nodes attached to his forehead and chest, and a wristband clamped rather uncomfortably around his right wrist. He was a tad disappointed that the brain-helmet didn’t actually resemble the mind-reading helmet that Doc had worn in _Back to the Future_ when Marty had first found him in 1955.

The lights in the room dimmed. A white square of light was projected onto a screen in front of Chuck, Casey, and Ellie. “Patient X, affix your attention to the screen ahead. The test will begin in three…two…one…”

Here we go, Chuck had time to think, before the pictures began and he started narrating the flashes as they hit in quick succession.

**28 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**DAVENPORT ESTATE**   
**18:49 EST**

After catching up with Gwen, or rather, informing her of what had occurred that day, Chuck begged off from the rest of the group gathered in the Davenports’ den, claiming a headache. It wasn’t a lie. The tests at the NSA had gone on for over an hour of consistent flashing, which meant his brain felt a bit like a brick that had been stuffed between his ears. He had popped a couple of ibuprofen when Ellie’s back had been turned, so the ache had dulled to a throb, but with all of the new sensations and areas and just holding it together around so many people all day, Chuck wanted to be alone. Nobody had protested, and now Sarah was picking up her car from storage, Ellie and Awesome had both been at orientation all day, and Casey had had his fill of Bartowskis well before noon.

Now, though, Chuck wandered the house. The Davenport lived in what was almost a mansion, which surprised Chuck somewhat since he’d never pictured the government paying quite well. But he supposed Mr. Davenport, whom Chuck had yet to meet, did fairly well at his job. Or maybe they came from family money. Chuck had no idea. He was just grateful that Gwen seemed so understanding, and that he wasn’t staying at the detention facility.

He should go down to the guest house, get a look at that, compare notes with Ellie and Awesome since they were just as out of place out here as he was.

Instead, he wandered until he found a home gym in the basement. Exercise equipment gathered around a few exercise mats, the treadmill and elliptical machine facing a flat-screen TV that matched the TV in the den inch for inch. A punching bag dangled from the ceiling on chains. There was a weight bench and a floor-length mirror, and all of the equipment had that well-cared, well-worn look that told Chuck at least one Davenport put some serious time down here.

It had been five days since he’d worked out. The bruises he’d picked up during the gunfight at the Heartbrake Hotel ached, but Chuck didn’t care. He had the sudden urge for a hard work-out. And if he couldn’t run in the park by his place in Burbank, he could at least clock some time on the treadmill. He dashed up to his room to grab his gear.

He regretted that he hadn’t packed his own luggage, as Casey hadn’t seen his iPod as a necessary accessory for DC. Since he hadn’t had time to put music on his new phone, he turned on the TV and switched over to the Sci-Fi channel to watch _Stargate SG-1_ while he ran. The TV was set to the news channel, but Chuck had discovered early on that watching the news only led to flashes, and he was tired of flashing today.

He tuned _Stargate_ out, losing himself to the rhythm of his feet pounding against the treadmill belt and the beat of his breath. Lights and sensors on the treadmill blinked, but he looked past the read-outs and just let himself go. It was almost like an out-of-body experience. He didn’t think about the ever-present threat of Fulcrum. He didn’t think about his ex-girlfriend lying three thousand miles away in a hospital room. He didn’t think about the need to see her, to make sure she was okay and to understand, that need withered and spread on the wind just like the ashes of the Heartbrake Hotel. He didn’t think of the shocked look in Leader’s eyes as the knife had continued to drip, the jerk of his body as three bullets penetrated his chest. He didn’t think about the greatest comfort and greatest confusion in his life. There was no guilt over screwing up the Burbank operation, no remorse in the face Director Graham’s ire, no bowing down to an angry Casey’s wrath. There was nothing but the sound of his breath.

He ran.

Sensation fizzled out. Chuck’s legs moved at a steady pace, not fast enough to push himself to new limits, but enough to challenge him. Time became a meaningless entity that only mattered to others. If he thought about it, and he wasn’t thinking about it because there was no thought in this twilight existence of just running, he might have philosophized that Chuck Bartowski ceased to exist. But he didn’t think about it. He just ran onward, pace never shifting, never fluctuating.

Something startled him out of his trance, though he had no idea what. Chuck blinked, swiveling his head about to search for the source. He nearly tripped when he realized he wasn’t alone.

“’Lo,” his companion greeted, and looked up from taping his fist. “Might want to watch it there, you’re about to run off the belt.”

Chuck nearly jumped and made the problem worse, but he managed to right himself on the treadmill belt before he could do something disastrous like fly off the back. Quickly, he jabbed at the pace button, slowing the belt down to a moderate jog. He was covered in sweat, and not just his normal light sheen reserved for public and open spaces. He was actually dripping onto the treadmill belt profusely enough that he had no idea how he hadn’t slipped and broken his neck already. His lungs were beyond sandpaper; he felt like he’d sucked on jet exhaust. Even as he regrouped, his hands and knees started shaking.

How long had he been running?

Since he had a needling suspicion the answer would only make him shake harder, he chose to turn and study the other man in the basement with him. “Thanks,” Chuck told him, his voice rasping uncomfortably against the back of his abused throat. 

“No problem.” His companion smiled. It had to be Russ Davenport; Chuck hadn’t met the other man yet, as he’d already gone to bed by the time Sarah, Chuck, and Casey had arrived the night before, and the agents had left under the cover of false dawn, it felt like. Chuck wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, knowing that Russ was an architect. Somebody smooth and svelte, maybe, with styled hair and trendy glasses that seemed to be all the rage among architects on TV. Russell Davenport, on the other hand, looked like a brawler. His hair was shaggy and mostly gray and looked like it hadn’t ever been styled by anything more than a comb. He was broad-shouldered in a way that made him seem top-heavy, and instead of a tailored suit, he wore a faded Orioles tee and equally-ancient gym shorts. He finished taping up his other hand. 

“I don’t think we’ve met,” Chuck said, slowing the treadmill down even more since it felt like his legs might physically collapse underneath him.

“You’re Chuck, right?” Russ asked, ripping off the tape and tucking the extra into the bundle around his knuckles. Seeing Chuck’s hesitant expression, he laughed a little. “I’ve met everybody else in your group. Process of elimination.”

“Oh.”

“Russ Davenport. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. I, um, the kitchen you designed looks really great.”

“Thanks.” Russ tossed the roll of tape onto a well-used table near the punching bag. There were three empty tape spools already crowded on the table. “It was Gwen’s idea. Don’t know why, she can’t cook.”

“So she said.” Chuck cleared his throat a little. “You don’t mind me using the equipment, do you?” It had been years, he thought, since he’d had to deal with people he didn’t know one-on-one without Casey or Sarah or Ellie nearby. He wondered if he would ever be comfortable with anybody outside of his chosen circle ever again. It was almost a depressing thought.

“It’s what it’s there for.” Russ stretched one arm across his chest and simultaneously popped his neck. Chuck had to admit the noise was certainly impressive. “There’s water in that fridge over there. You should get one. You’re bright red.”

“Uh, right.” Since he was suddenly dying of thirst, Chuck pulled out the plastic key-card and the treadmill rolled to a stop. The instant he took one step off of the treadmill and onto the basement floor, his knee buckled, the room swam, and he entertained one flash-like vision of the floor racing at his nose. He blinked. Black sparkled at the edges of his vision, but when it receded, he found himself gripping the arm-guard, his knuckles white. Miraculously, he was still on his feet.

“You okay?” Russ asked, stretching out the other arm.

“Ran farther than I thought.” Sheer will kept Chuck on his feet, though he was breathing like a steam engine, and his legs had been replaced by flimsy rubber replicas. He made it across the room, retrieved a bottle of water, and promptly collapsed on top of the mini-fridge, where he proceeded to down half of the bottom like a man stranded in the desert. “Ran way farther than I thought,” he said when he lowered the bottle.

“It happens.” Russ smacked the punching bag a couple of times, testing jabs at the most. Chuck watched the bag swing in reaction. His own knuckles twanged painfully with the phantom memory of pounding on Frank, but he just tightened his grip on the water bottle and continued to drink. His throat felt like somebody had taken an actual chisel to the inside of it, and his head felt foggy and distant, disconnected from his body. 

“Good to see somebody using the treadmill. Bought it for Gwen, but she prefers that…thing.” Russ jerked his head at the elliptical machine, both an amused and a derisive motion. “Still don’t understand it.”

Chuck watched the bag swing almost carelessly when the other man pounded it a few times. He didn’t really have anything intelligent to add to the conversation, so he made one of Casey’s grunting noises that always seemed to take the place of full sentences.

“Ha,” Russ said, and hit the bag again. “Yeah, I know, I talk too much.”

“People say the same thing about me. Well, not in those words. Usually it’s, ‘Okay, enough, Chuck,’ or ‘Shut up, Chuck,’ but you know what I’m saying.” Chuck thought about it as he downed another quarter of the water bottle. “Okay, maybe they don’t say that all the time, but yeah. How long, uh, how long have you been boxing? Because you’re, wow, that bag’s really moving. My partner, Sarah, she beats the hell out of our training dummy—his name’s Frank, not that that’s important—but he doesn’t move much unless she kicks him.” Chuck paused to think about that. “Also, he’s bolted to the floor. It helps, I think.”

Russ’s jabs at the bag paused for a minute. “You named your training dummy?” he asked.

“I also put him in a dress.”

Russ’s mouth twitched. “Yeah?”

“A really ugly one,” Chuck said. Because he was still thirsty, he helped himself to a second bottle of water, and got one out to set on the table beside Russ. His knees still felt a bit watery as he crossed the room. “I also put makeup on him, but don’t remind Sarah of that. She’s still a little peeved. She’s protective of Frank.”

“Mm-hmm.” Russ nodded his thanks for the water and resumed striking the bag with quick, controlled movements that struck Chuck as really precise. “Since college,” he said.

Chuck blinked. “What?”

“Before you started talking about dressing up your dummy, you asked when I got into boxing. In college.” Russ jabbed the bag a few more times. “It’s how I met Gwen, actually.”

“Yeah?”

“Boxing club.”

“Get out,” Chuck said, thinking of the petite FBI agent. “Gwen’s a boxer?”

“Used to be. She prefers that thing more these days.” Russ nodded at the elliptical again.

“So are you two college sweethearts?”

“Are you kidding?” Russ actually laughed. “She hated me. I broke her perfect fight record.”

“Wait, you used to box against _each other_?” The water bottle stopped halfway to Chuck’s mouth.

“Yep.” Russ hit the bag with a series of uppercuts that made Chuck reevaluate the other man’s strength. He was built like a freaking bear. “Relax, it was just sparring and it was one of those off-the-record deals. Our club didn’t really play by the rules, and I didn’t knock her unconscious or anything.”

“How’s that work with you two being married?”

“Surprisingly well. I just remember she’s got a ferocious right hook and most arguments stop before they even get started.” Russ grinned, just a quick, surefire flash of amusement. “Took me a couple of years to wear her down after that.”

“Wow,” Chuck said, and took a long drink of water while his mind worked to process that. “I can’t even imagine. If Sarah and I got into a fight, she’d kick my ass in two seconds. I’m pretty sure she’s been tempted a time or two.”

“A-ha,” Russ said.

Chuck’s head shot up. “A-ha? Wh-what do you mean by a-ha?”

“I mean that Gwennie owes me twenty bucks.” Russ smirked and hit the bag again in a combo that mystified Chuck but seemed to make sense to the architect. “I said you two were a thing, she said it wasn’t possible.”

And a week before, Chuck would have agreed whole-heartedly with Gwen. Now, with Sarah’s confession on the table, he simply felt bewildered. “We’re not officially,” he said, and searched for a word. Since he couldn’t figure out what to say, he just echoed Russ. “A thing. We’re not officially anything. It’s complicated.”

“Uh-huh.” More pounding on the bag, but Russ seemed amused. 

Chuck sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “But there have been…overtures made.”

Russ laughed. “Overtures,” he repeated, still beating on the bag. He seemed to expel a sharp, huffing breath every time his fists made contact with the bag’s beaten surface, a piece of information Chuck tucked away for later. “Overtures. Wish I had some sage advice for you, kid, as you seem like a nice guy, but…”

“Yeah,” Chuck said. “I don’t know if sage advice helps. There is always that little voice in my head that says, ‘Hey, dude, Sarah said she likes you, and have you seen how awesome, and, oh yeah, how hot she is?’ There’s always that voice.”

“You hear these voices often?” Russ asked.

“Oh, sure, I’m probably crazy.”

“Seem perfectly sane to me.”

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t listen to the voice?”

“Well, the voice isn’t exactly telling you to stab somebody in a motel shower, so what’s the harm?”

Chuck stared at the other man for a long time, something that didn’t seem to faze Russ Davenport at all if the way he kept attacking the bag was any indication. In the middle of a thought, Chuck burst out into inexplicable, unstoppable laughter. He held one hand over his stomach, doubling forward slightly. “You make it sound really simple,” he said once the laughter had died down.

“Don’t know what to tell you there.” Russ smacked the bag once, twice, dancing around now. “Sometimes it’s simple. Sometimes it’s not.”

“That’s highly philosophical,” Chuck decided, not sure if that advice was supposed to be sage or not.

“It took me two and a half years to wear Gwen down to consider going on a date with me.” Russ reached out and stilled the bag. He was breathing a little harder than he had been in the beginning, and sweat had sprouted at his temples. “When we tell people that story, they ask her if she regrets waiting that long. She says no.”

“Okay,” Chuck said, not sure exactly what Russ was trying to tell him and how it applied to listening to the voices in his head.

Russ patted his palms against the heavy bag, as if assuring himself it was still there. He was three or four inches shorter than Chuck, but somehow Chuck felt very small standing next to him. “I think what I’m trying to say, and don’t forget I’m an architect, not a philosopher, is that you should live your life in a way you won’t regret later.”

Immediately, four or five regrets swam to the surface of Chuck’s mind: things like saying yes to Professor Fleming at Stanford, stalking Jill and her Fulcrum cohorts, losing his temper with Sarah that morning. And, since his legs were shuddering from the effort of his earlier run, he definitely regretted losing track of reality on the treadmill.

And not a single one of them he could take back.

Chuck frowned. “Are you sure you’re in the right field?”

“Nope, just old.” Russ glanced down at Chuck’s feet. “Got your legs under you?”

That was an odd question. “Yeah.”

“Good. You can hold the bag, then. Consider it a payment for an old fogey’s advice.”

“Done,” Chuck said, and moved to brace the bag so that Russ could beat on it in earnest while he turned the older man’s advice over in his mind. By the time Russ declared his work-out done, with a few conversational breaks where they talked about the Patriots’ chances this year (Chuck mostly just bobbed his head), Chuck had figured out at least one thing he could get a grip on in his life.

**28 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**DAVENPORT ESTATE**   
**20:17 EST**

Reminders of his shower were still clinging to his hair and skin as Chuck bundled into his winter coat and headed outside through the sliding door connected off the dining room. He hadn’t run into Gwen or any of the others, but Sarah had slipped into his bedroom while he showered and had left a note on the bed: “BBQ @ Guest House, join us!” She had scribbled a little smiley face at the bottom of the paper, which had inspired Chuck to fold the paper and carefully put it into his wallet before he’d headed down.

Now, he picked his way across the back yard to the little guest house, or mother-in-law cottage, as Gwen had called it. There were footprints already in the light crust of snow that told him he was going the right way, and he could see smoke from the grill rising from behind the one-story little building. The surrounding trees closed the property in and made all of the space a bit more tolerable, but Chuck picked up his pace to reach the others. Going on instinct, he didn’t use the front door of the cottage, instead heading around the side. The gardens were bared by the oncoming threat of winter and the snow lay over the winter-brown grass in patches, but he imagined that in the summer, this place must be a show-house.

There was a patio and a swimming pool behind the cottage. And gathered on the patio, bundled in winter gear just like him, were Ellie, Awesome, Sarah, and Casey.

Awesome, manning the smoking grill, spotted him first. “Hey, Chuckster, just in time! Welcome back to the land of the living!”

“Captain Awesome, awesome as always,” Chuck said with mock solemnity. Even though he’d seen Awesome at breakfast, he endured what Ellie called the man-hug. “What’s cooking?” He sniffed appreciatively.

“Red meat! Special Woodcomb rub, it’s like an orgy for your taste buds.” Awesome poked one of the steaks arrayed on the grill with his tongs. Though he wore a parka similar to Chuck’s, he had put a “Kiss the Cook” apron on over it. “How do you like your steak? Nuked or napalmed?”

“Oh, napalmed, for sure. Mostly because I know Casey probably actually has some napalm on him, and I’d pay good money to see that. But barring actual napalm, maybe medium-well? Hey, El.” His sister had slipped up beside him during Awesome’s questions. “How’d the rest of your day go?”

“Orientations.” Ellie waved a hand, dismissing all of that in one gesture. She squinted up at him. “Did your headache go away?”

“I thought I hid that from you,” Chuck said, frowning.

“Nice try.” Ellie took her time searching Chuck’s face, but whatever she saw there, she seemed satisfied. “You look better.”

Chuck’s legs had finally stopped wobbling halfway through his shower, and now that his throat and chest no longer felt hollowed out from his run, he was actually close to starving. “Went for a run.”

“Awesome!” Awesome held up a hand for a high-five.

Chuck returned the high-five and made his excuses to head over to the table where Casey sat. Sarah had slipped back into the guest house for some reason. He glanced after her, but with a shrug plopped down in the Adirondack chair next to Casey. “Bit cold,” he said.

“You think?” Since Ellie was around, Casey left the “moron” at the end of his sentence unspoken. After a minute or so, he relented. “It’s not too bad, actually, for this time of the year, snow aside.” His face painted quite the picture of dislike for snow.

After spending three years in Siberia, Chuck couldn’t help but agree.

Casey eyed him for a minute and sighed. “I’m only going to say this once, and if you moron-babble back at me, I’m going to shove my foot up your ass so far you will have no choice but to kiss the ground I walk on.” When Chuck blinked and opened his mouth, one of Casey’s eyebrows went up, a deliberate threat. Chuck closed his mouth. “Good. You’re learning. You held your own in there against Graham today. You were an idiot and a moron, and the fact that you nearly got us all killed makes me still want to strangle you a bit, but you didn’t make excuses or whine today, so you and me, we’re fine. Provided you don’t pull a fool stunt like that ever again. Got it, Bartowski?”

“I got it,” Chuck said when he found his voice. The look on Casey’s face should really be bottled and used to frighten children into actually doing their homework.

“Good.” Casey took a sip of his beer and settled back. Now that his piece had been said, he looked almost content. He stretched his feet out toward the raised fire pit the others had set up and sighed.

Chuck decided that with Awesome manning the grill, Sarah still gone, and Ellie deep in conversation with her boyfriend, he didn’t really have anything else to do. He stretched his feet out toward the fire. The tips of his ears were cold and would only get colder, but he didn’t want to return to the main house to collect his hat. After a minute, he remembered something he had been meaning to ask Casey about when he had the chance.

“Do you have any contacts that could get you data about military personnel?” he asked, dropping his voice so that Ellie and Awesome wouldn’t overhear.

Casey turned his head to look over, his eyes narrowed. “Could be. Why do you want to know?”

“I’ve been trying to find some information on a soldier, KIA. Well, two soldiers, but I’m not sure which one it is. I don’t know if it’s relevant, but I think it may have something to do with the Intersect project.”

“Where are you getting your intel, Bartowski?”

Chuck took a deep breath. “Bryce Larkin. Have you ever heard of Project Omaha?” Since Casey still looked annoyed, albeit a bit interested, he quickly summarized what had happened with the menu back in the Bungalow, and the strip of paper he’d found in his pocket in the hospital waiting room upon the return to Burbank. By the end of his tale, he could almost keep time to the vein throbbing in Casey’s forehead.

“And why the hell didn’t you tell me this before, Bartowski?” Casey demanded.

“With the menu, you were going to execute Sarah on the beach and then your lieutenant beat the hell out of me, so forgive me if I had other things on my mind.” 

“And the Phillip Dartmoor paper?”

Chuck winced. That one was a little harder to explain. “I wanted to find out if there was something to it before I brought it up to anybody,” he said.

“Oh, yeah, because that’s worked out well for you.” Casey snorted as his eyes swept around the backyard, and Chuck got the message: the team was in DC because of Chuck’s foolish actions with the Fulcrum cell phone. 

He winced again. “Yeah, point. But I’m bringing it up now, and Sarah kind of already knows about it. I’m sure she just hasn’t brought it up because we’ve all been so busy lately, and it’s probably not even that important. Bryce liked to play games back at Stanford. That hasn’t changed.”

Casey was silent for a long moment as he chewed on that information. “You think it’s important?” he finally asked.

“I stopped having the first clue about anything a long time ago. I think it’s worth checking out. Anything that can help us against Fulcrum, right?” Chuck stretched his hands toward the fire. He still felt a bit like a limp noodle after the punishing run he had put his body through, and his stomach growled at the thought of dinner.

It took Casey a minute to answer. “I’ll ask around. Phillip Dartmoor, you said?”

“Yes.” Chuck listed off the serial numbers of both, and had to do it again when Casey pulled a notepad and a small pen from his pocket to note down details. The NSA agent was just tucking both away when Sarah came out of the guest house, juggling a platter for the meat and three bottles of beer. The former, she delivered to Awesome and Ellie before she wandered over to Chuck and Casey. Since there were only two other chairs free and those seemed reserved for Ellie and Awesome, she dropped down onto Chuck’s arm chair.

“Beer, gentlemen?” she asked, reaching inside her jacket. No, Chuck saw, inside her shirt. She pulled a knife out and flicked the blade loose.

With anybody else, Chuck might have wondered if she was going to kill him. Instead, he watched with absurd fascination as Sarah popped the first bottle top off with the dull side of the blade, and passed the beer to Casey, who grunted his thanks as he took it.

“Neat trick,” Chuck decided as Sarah handed him a beer, their fingers brushing a little. 

Had that been intentional? “Thanks,” Sarah said, smiling. “I’m pretty good with knives.”

“Which is like saying the Pacific’s a bit damp, but okay. Cheers.” Chuck tapped his bottle to Sarah’s and took a long drink. He leaned back in the chair, shifting to the right so that Sarah’s weight on the left arm wouldn’t knock the chair over. When he realized what the move looked like, as though he were trying to get as far from her as possible, he opened his mouth to apologize quickly, but Sarah just smiled and sipped her beer, giving him a minute head-shake.

It occurred to Chuck that life could be very interesting with a mind-reader. Also that he could get into a lot of trouble.

“So whose idea was the barbecue?” he asked instead.

“Casey’s,” Sarah replied before the NSA agent could give her the evil eye. “He ever so politely informed me that I lost the bet because he took out more Fulcrum people than I did, so I owed everybody dinner, and Devon suggested a barbecue.”

Chuck considered it. “It fits. Awesome would be the only one awesome enough to actually pull off a barbecue when it’s below freezing.”

Sarah’s eyes glimmered wickedly. She was leaning toward the fire, one arm tucked around her midsection while the other rested on her knee, the bottle dangling loosely from her fingers by the neck. She leaned over now, nudging Chuck. “Pool’s heated,” she said, and took a sip of beer. “You’re welcome to strip down and jump in. I’m told the water’s very warm.”

Chuck nearly dropped his beer. In the other chair, Casey rolled his eyes and rose to stride away, muttering something about having forgotten his book and needing to get away from “CIA morons who can’t keep it in their pants.”

Sarah waited until he was gone and started snickering. After a minute, Chuck joined in. “It really is too easy.” Sarah sounded almost regretful about that, but the wickedness lived on: she stole Casey’s seat and let out a happy sigh as she leaned back, stretching her boots toward the fire.

She looked far more relaxed than he’d seen her in a long time, even in the Jeep driving toward Phoenix. Her coat was unzipped over the shirt she’d worn around the CIA and NSA headquarters earlier, though she had changed into jeans and a pair of fuzzy boots to ward off of the cold. There was a light blue scarf around her neck, not tied. In that moment, she didn’t look a thing like Superspy Agent Walker, just a woman in her mid-twenties enjoying a beer with friends.

Sarah turned toward him, her head tilted a little. “You’re staring,” she said.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier,” Chuck said.

Sarah’s eyebrows went high and then low very quickly. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal, Chuck. We’re all tired and living in close quarters. Stuff like this is bound to happen.”

“No, it is a big deal. I can’t just take my aggression out on you. It’s not fair to you, with everything you’ve done for me, and for Ellie, and even for Casey, though I know you’ll never admit it.” Chuck scratched the bare strip of skin between his parka and his hair at the back of his neck. The way Sarah was studying him, as though he were some kind of foreign specimen she didn’t understand, made him want to squirm, but he had rehearsed what he needed to say after talking to Russ about life philosophies. “So I apologize.”

Sarah was quiet for a long moment, still studying him thoughtfully. “Apology accepted,” she said, and narrowed her eyes playfully. “Though I bet you don’t worry this much about Casey’s feelings.”

“Well, you’re much prettier than Casey.”

Sarah’s jaw dropped.

Despite the nerves, Chuck had to grin. “What, like you didn’t know that?” He leaned over. “I have to admit, the man has a jaw chiseled by Michelangelo himself, just between you and me. He’s a very attractive—oh, hi, Casey. How’s it going?”

Sarah threw a hand over her mouth to stop the giggles as she and Chuck looked up at the NSA agent, who had approached during Chuck’s speech. 

Casey looked from one face to the other suspiciously, evidently decided he didn’t want to know, and looked accusingly at Sarah. “You’re in my seat, Walker.”

Sarah shrugged and pulled herself onto the arm of Chuck’s seat again, this time sitting between Chuck and Casey.

“Meat’s done!” Awesome called.

Later, sitting around the fire while everybody ate, Chuck looked around at the group ranged about him. Casey devoted his attention to the meal, Sarah and Ellie listened to Awesome’s tales of whitewater rafting. Chuck had inhaled the first half of his steak, but he slowed now, enjoying the flavor and texture and conversation. They were all trapped in limbo, he thought. Nobody knew how long they would be in DC, where they were going next, if Burbank was safe for them anymore. His sister had to be nervous, Chuck thought, and Awesome probably was, too. But here they were, sitting outside in the cold and just enjoying a meal together.

One step at a time, Chuck heard Sarah’s voice say in his head. He glanced across the fire at her now; she had taken the empty chair after Awesome had opted to sit on the ground in front of Ellie’s seat. Because it was Sarah, she noticed the attention right away. It didn’t faze her. Still chewing, she raised an eyebrow at him for just a fraction of a second.

Chuck felt himself grin back and returned his attention to his food. One step at a time, he reminded himself.

Sarah’s voice broke through again, though, and had him stopping with his fork halfway to his mouth.

Just say the word, Chuck.

**28 NOVEMBER 2007**   
**DAVENPORT ESTATE**   
**21:49 EST**

As soon as the meal had ended, Casey had bowed out, claiming something about needing an insanity plea if he spent more time around the other team members. Chuck imagined he would probably stay up for another hour reading the Reagan biography Sarah had picked up for him at the airport in Phoenix, and wake to do his rounds of the estate at midnight and four, as Sarah had elected to do the ten, two, and six a.m. rounds tonight. Chuck didn’t feel comfortable letting his teammates take all of the rounds, but both had pointed out that Chuck had neither spy training nor proficiency with weapons, and he was the thing they were trying to protect. Even so, it rankled.

He’d helped Ellie with the dishes and they’d joked about feuding agencies while Awesome perused DC tourist guides, seeking activities they could do the minute the team got some leave time. Chuck hadn’t had the heart to tell him that he probably wouldn’t be able to handle any tourist sites, but judging from the sympathetic look Sarah had tossed his way a couple of times during the discussions, he figured he wouldn’t have to. Sarah would probably take care of that, just like she saw to everything else.

Just say the word, Chuck.

That phrase had echoed, refusing to be ignored, all the way through dinner and slices of the chocolate cake Ellie had baked. It had pestered him during the dishes and afterward, when they’d all had another beer. Sarah hadn’t pressed him about the issue at all. She wasn’t crowding him any more than usual, and she had made it more than clear that the ball was in his court, and she would stand by whatever decision he made.

That didn’t help at all. It should have been an easy thing to say yes to her. She was Sarah Walker. She was awesome, and beautiful, and she liked _him_ against all odds. He didn’t have to understand it, he knew. He should be able to accept it. Nothing had changed. Whatever feelings she had, they had apparently been there for awhile, and she had made it clear that she wasn’t going anywhere and wouldn’t judge.

But it made him nervous as hell, knowing she was thinking things like that about him.

Now, walking across the Davenport lawn next to her, he watched her out of the corner of his eye. “Isn’t it the guy’s job to walk the girl to her door?” he joked.

She smirked. “Not if the girl’s the armed one. And that’s dating, not espionage.”

“Sometimes I wonder if there’s a difference.” Chuck craned his neck to look up at the stars overhead. The wintry sky had magnified them so that they seemed to sit right overtop the trees, since the Davenport estate was out in the middle of the country. After the clangor of Burbank, he was almost jittery with the lack of sound out here. “It’s a nice night, though. I’m glad Awesome had the idea for the barbecue. And excellent cooking on your part, by the way. The potato salad was just delicious. What herb _did_ you use?”

Sarah laughed and shoved his arm. “You’d have to ask Beeman’s Deli, jerk.”

Chuck grinned at her before he remembered the nerves boiling his stomach. He cleared his throat. “How’s it feel to be back in DC?”

“All right. It was never more than a crash-pad between missions.” Sarah tucked her hands in her pockets as they walked, very slowly, toward the back patio, where she would leave Chuck and move on to do her rounds of the estate, most of which was dark. The Davenport kids had school the next day, and everybody else had to report in to work. “I stopped by my apartment and picked up some essentials. I really don’t even think I should keep the place, as I’ll never use it again.” She frowned at the ground for a few seconds as they continued to meander across the lawn. “My spider plant died again.”

She seemed genuinely upset about that, which made Chuck pause. “I’ll buy you a new one,” he offered.

“Probably better not to. That was like the fourth or fifth one I’ve killed.”

“Aha. Chlorocide. I see.” Chuck shoulder-bumped Sarah before he realized what he was doing. He stiffened, but Sarah didn’t seem to notice. Since they were almost to the back patio, he slowed to a stop. “Sarah, we need to talk.”

Sarah didn’t look the slightest bit nervous, which he felt was really quite unfair, given that his midsection was about to be eaten alive by the nerves. She stopped next to him, her hands in her jeans pockets, feet spread, head slightly tilted. “Okay,” she said. “What’s up?”

Chuck looked at her and a thousand topics sprang to mind. He wanted to ask the ever-present _why, why_ would you ever like me question that was constantly on his mind. He wanted to ask if it got easier to deal with death, if the flashes of memory of Leader would ever go away, but he didn’t think he really wanted to know the answer to that. There was the need to be reassured that things after DC would be okay, but she had no way of knowing that either. And the idea of talking about Jill to her, trying to figure out what the _hell_ he felt about any of that, rose to mind, but he dismissed it as unfair to Sarah. Until he knew better himself, he would keep that inside. There was the ever-present curiosity about Sarah herself, what she thought of things, those interesting little glimpses into her life in the CIA and before that.

But none of that came out.

Instead, he asked the last question he expected.

“Sarah, do you want to go on a date? With me?”

“Chuck, that’s…” Sarah, obviously intending to say something else, trailed off and gave him a puzzled look. “What?”

“You said ‘Just say the word, Chuck,’” Chuck said, so nervous that he could almost hear his voice shaking. He hoped Sarah didn’t. Since he wanted to shuffle his feet, he planted them and stayed absolutely still. “Well, this is me. Saying the word. I have no idea why you would even want to go out on a date with a guy like me when you’re, well, _you_ , but…do you want to?” When Sarah continued to just stare blankly at him, he cleared his throat and debated just sprinting away. If he ran fast enough, he could pretend he had been somewhere else and accuse her of hallucinating. She might even believe him. But that was the cowardly way of dealing with it, so he stood his ground. “Uh, Sarah? I know it’s a little middle school to ask this way, but—”

“Yes!” Sarah said, seeming to snap out of it.

Chuck froze. “What? You said yes? Or did I just hallucinate?”

“Yes. Wait, no.”

“No?” Chuck’s stomach sank.

Sarah grabbed the sleeves of his parka so fast he nearly jumped. “No, you’re not hallucinating,” she said, and there was a breathless quality to her voice that made Chuck’s heart speed up. “Yes, I said yes. I want to go on a date with you, Chuck.”

“You mean that?”

Sarah threw her head back and laughed. “I mean that,” she said emphatically, her grip tightening to almost painful levels on his arms.

The pressure was easily ignored, though. Chuck felt the grin start somewhere at his toes and spread until his teeth hurt. “Okay,” he heard himself say. He had to take a deep breath to fight down a weird surge of giddiness. “Okay. It’s a date.”

Sarah’s grin seemed to match his. “It’s a date,” she echoed.

Chuck had no idea how long they stood like that, just grinning at each other like fools. He came to awareness first, and had to clear his throat a couple of times to get himself back on track. Feeling awkward and giddy and a thousand things he wasn’t sure he would have ever felt again, he pointed stupidly at the house. “Um, that’s where I’m going, so I should probably…do that. Um, what do we do now? Do we hug? Is this a hug situation?”

“I…have no clue,” Sarah said, and it sounded like she might be realizing the same awkwardness herself. “I’m not sure what hug etiquette calls for.”

“Uh. Okay. Right.”

“But.” Sarah sprang at him so fast that, had he not planted his feet, he would have tumbled backward and taken her with him. Her arms went around him and she squeezed once, tightly, before she bounced backward on her heels. The hug was so hard that Chuck felt his teeth rattle, but his grin didn’t lessen. “You should go inside. I’ve got to go do my rounds.”

“Okay.” Chuck turned to obediently head toward the house, but stopped a few steps away. He half-turned. “Good night, Sarah.”

“Good night, Chuck.”

As Chuck reached the sliding door, a noise behind him made him whirl, his hand automatically going for the tranq gun he wasn’t wearing. But he saw nothing in the darkness, save a bright head of blonde hair. Sarah, it looked like, had stumbled over something on the lawn and was picking herself up. “Are you okay?” Chuck called, hoping he didn’t wake anybody inside.

He didn’t expect to see Sarah flash him a smile that could light entire solar systems, but she just waved the accident off. “I’m great! Good night!”

And once she had vanished into the woods to do her rounds, Chuck went inside. He was halfway up the stairs when it hit him.

He was now officially dating Sarah Walker. Oh God.


	39. All That…And A Bag of Chips

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all. — _Helen Rowland_

**12 DECEMBER 2007**   
**NSA HEADQUARTERS**   
**14:17 EST**

Chuck quietly closed the door behind him, grateful that Casey had managed to excuse himself for a bathroom break at the same time as Ellie had been called in to talk to the scientists. They got a bit tired of hearing the modulated voices of those inside the lab, Chuck figured. At last, he could get away from the blinding whiteness of the Intersect testing room and rest in the hallway. It was a gamble, as the Intersect scientists used the same hallway to access their lab and he was expressly forbidden from seeing them, but he was wearing his NSA IT department badge, and he could claim he’d simply gotten lost if caught. They would never know he was Patient X, which meant they could never see him with Casey, Sarah, or Ellie, and they could never hear his real voice.

He poked his head out and glanced around. When he saw nobody, he nearly let out a cheer. 

“Chuck.”

He’d spoken too soon.

At least it was only Sarah, striding toward him as fast as her considerably long legs could carry her. It wasn’t the “We’re in trouble” gait, but her walk was hurried. Instead of pushing him back into the testing lab, as he half-feared she might, she grabbed his sleeve and pulled. 

Chuck entertained a brief but very informative vision of being pushed up against a wall by Sarah, her weight against him, his hands tangled in her hair, her lips on his. He blinked, and Sarah let go of his arm, keeping a regular distance from him. Either she hadn’t noticed the split-second fantasy or it didn’t concern her.

The problem was, he thought, that over the past two weeks, the daydreams had increased. The first one, the morning after he’d asked Sarah on a date, had taken him by surprise. She had smiled at him from across the breakfast table, around which there was a full complement of people: all three in the guest house had come to the main house for breakfast, Russ and Gwen were there, as were their children, seventeen-year-old Stephanie and fifteen-year-old Nathaniel. And Chuck had looked across the table, seen Sarah smile at him, and thought about simply walking around the table, pulling her to her feet, and bending her backward until she was on the table and he was on top of her.

It had been an incredibly graphic vision. And it had made him more than a little uncomfortable, both because of the people around and because he respected Sarah. It felt wrong. Even worse, it felt like he was a teenager all over again, driven by hormones.

The worst part wasn’t that he was now constantly baffled at himself, it was that he was edgy. And nervous, definitely nervous around Sarah, and it was tripping up the easy camaraderie, which only made him edgier and more and more flustered.

Russ had started teaching him how to box—or at least how to hit the punching bag without damaging his hands. The architect was laidback enough that Chuck had no choice but to relax, but he didn’t let Chuck try to cut corners. And repeatedly hitting a punching bag was so therapeutic that Chuck would never doubt Sarah if she ever went after Frank again.

He focused on her now, trying to blink away after-images of his most recent vision. It took him a second to realize that she was all but brimming with excitement. Most people might not have noticed, but he knew that when she held her hands at her sides like that, she was excited about something. “What’s up?” he asked.

Her eyes sparkled. “I figured out our date.”

Chuck’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, really?”

The date itself, Chuck thought, the other problem. Nobody had actually said anything, but it was understood that the bosses would frown on a relationship. Which meant that Chuck was only able to talk about the date—which was gaining more importance every passing day—when he was sure Casey wasn’t around to report back to their bosses. They were operating under a very strange version of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. One with its own system of grunts, evidently.

“Tomorrow night,” Sarah said, and bit her lip. It made her grin a little crooked.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got the place all lined up.”

“Where,” Chuck started to ask, but Sarah’s head cut to the right, toward the control center. She yanked the door behind her open and hauled on Chuck’s arm. He had no choice but to stumble forward through the open door. Sarah gave him a “Keep quiet!” look and shut the door behind him, leaving him alone in the dark.

Chuck’s foot splashed into something, and he almost cursed. Sarah had shoved him into a janitorial supply closet, judging by the dim shapes of the shelves he could see from the light beneath the door. His entire left foot was submerged in water, water that oozed uncomfortably into his shoe, soaking his sock before he could pull the foot from the water. As he did so, he kicked something: the mop bucket.

It clattered to the floor. Chuck swore under his breath as water gushed everywhere, including across the toe of his other foot.

“Agent Lynch!” he heard a voice say outside the door, and he froze. No wonder Sarah had tossed him in the closet. That was Dr. Zarnow’s voice. Chuck recognized it only because it had been speaking to him through the headset for two weeks now. “There you are. Excellent, I had hoped to have a word with you. Would it be possible for you to liaise with Major Nelson and request an extra half-hour from Patient X today?”

“I suppose. I thought Major Nelson was with you in the control center?”

“She left before we could make our request. Dr. Loomis wants to verify a few pattern-recognition trends he’s noted within Patient X.”

“Is something wrong with them?”

“Not at all. In correlating data for the new Intersect, however, it’s best to be certain.”

New Intersect? Chuck promptly forgot about the water soaking his feet and the fact that he was in a room he hadn’t had time to explore. They were going to build another Intersect after Bryce had blown the first sky-high? That seemed a bit…he couldn’t decide how he felt about that. It would be nice if there were others to take up some of the work he did, but at what point did he become obsolete? What point did the information in his head no longer matter?

Chuck decided, ignoring the sudden dread in his stomach, that it was probably better not to think about it for now. He focused on Sarah’s voice again, the cold sensation of dampness around his feet trickling back in.

“I will speak with Major Nelson.” Sarah used her professional voice, the one that seemed strange to Chuck, since it lacked Sarah’s natural warmth. “But I should warn you the Major probably won’t approve of the extra testing. Patient X is already beginning to show strain.”

He wasn’t, Chuck thought, but by the end of the day, he would be fighting a headache. The constant flashing that the tests required always made his head hurt more than usual. To make matters worse, his shoes wouldn’t be dry by the time they were ready to leave, and Casey kept the air conditioning in the Crown Vic on year round, it seemed.

“I understand. Dr. Loomis assures me the tests wouldn’t be strenuous, and if you could pass that on to Major Nelson, it would be much appreciated.”

“I will do that.” There was a pause and Chuck, on the other side of the door, wondered exactly what was going on. Sarah cleared her throat. “Did you need anything else, Doctor?”

“No, not at all.”

“Then I’ll see you inside? I just need a moment.”

“Certainly.”

Chuck heard footsteps recede, but it was a minute before Sarah opened the door. She looked him up and down, putting her hand on his chest to prevent him from leaving. 

“Best for you to stay put until I know all of the scientists are back in the control center,” she said.

Chuck just looked down at her hand. Smiling, she removed it and must have spotted the spreading pool at Chuck’s feet. “What’s all this?”

“You shoved me into the mop bucket.”

“I did?” Apology and amusement mixed as Sarah obviously fought back a smile. “What is it you say? My bad?”

“You’re laughing at me.” Chuck sighed.

Sarah’s barely-repressed grin intensified. Wordlessly, she held her index finger and thumb very close together, and bit her lip.

“Figures.” Chuck gave her a pained look.

Sarah ran her hand up his arm once, elbow to shoulder, before she dropped her hand back to her side. “I’ll make Casey turn up the heat in the Crown Vic,” she said by way of apology, and brightened so suddenly that Chuck nearly blinked. “Want to hear about the date now?”

“If it will distract me from my wet feet, sure.” Chuck made it a point to heave a sigh, though the same excitement coursed through him, as it had every time their date had been mentioned. 

“I convinced Casey to let us have tomorrow night.”

“Really? Wait, does Casey know _why_?”

“He does have eyes. He said,” and Sarah dropped her voice in a horrible imitation of Casey, “‘as long as the moron keeps his lady feelings to himself, I don’t care what sort of sick things you two get up to in your spare time.’”

From Casey, it was all but a ringing endorsement. Still, Chuck wrinkled his nose. “Sick? I asked you out on a proper date!”

Sarah waved that off. “It’s Casey. He’s not exactly Mr. Romance.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Chuck said, scratching his ear while he thought about it. “Seems like the guy has connections, if he wanted to be romantic he could probably get one or two things right and—wow, you just went really green there for a second. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Sarah took a deep breath and if Chuck hadn’t been paying attention, he might have missed the brief shudder. But one blink and Sarah was back to normal, the regular tinged-with-mischief smile back in place. “Anyway, tomorrow night. You don’t have plans, right?”

“Um…” Chuck scratched the back of his head. “I think I have a date, actually.”

Sarah opened her mouth, possibly to ask him who the hell he would possibly have a date with, when it clearly dawned on her. She smiled. “Clever.”

Chuck gave her a little half-shrug: you started it.

“Seven thirty, tomorrow night,” Sarah said. “I’ll drive.”

“You usually do.”

Sarah checked over her shoulder and, apparently deeming it safe, motioned for Chuck to come out. “You’d better get back in there. Casey’s going to come looking for you any minute.”

“Good point.” But Chuck paused at the door to the testing lab and turned. Sarah, who was waiting for him to go back inside before she headed back to the control center, lifted an eyebrow at him. He took a deep breath. “Sorry, I’m a little slow, but it occurs to me that shouldn’t I be the one to pick the date location?”

“Chuck?” Her smile was the brilliant one again, far more blinding that the testing lab would ever be. “You already did.”

What the hell did she mean by that? Chuck gave her a puzzled look, but she only made a shooing motion for him to go back inside. He knew her expression well; he wasn’t getting another thing out of Sarah unless he started arguing with her, and that probably wasn’t a good note to start their date off on. So he just held up his hands in a “What can you do?” motion and went inside as ordered.

**14 DECEMBER 2007**   
**DAVENPORT ESTATE**   
**19:02 EST**

There were strings attached, of course. Chuck gazed in dismay at the tranq gun Casey had delivered to his room. It didn’t seem heavy, but he remembered shooting Sarah with perfect clarity. And Casey expected him to carry that weapon on a date with the very same woman? It was like the universe was conspiring against him.

A knock sounded, and Chuck stashed the gun into its customary spot at his waistband. Nate was a big fan of Halo; he and Chuck had played a few sessions over the past couple of weeks. And even if Chuck knew that Steph and Nate had grown up with an FBI agent for a mother, and they knew that he, Casey, and Sarah were all federal agents, he didn’t feel comfortable being anywhere around them with a weapon they might see.

It was Ellie at the door, however, which made Chuck even more grateful that he had put the gun away. His sister knew quite a bit more about the dangerous side of Chuck’s job than he wanted her to, and she seemed to be accepting it somewhat well, but the last thing he wanted to do was wave a gun in her face.

He’d done enough to her as it was.

“Got a minute?” she asked when he called for her to come in.

“For you, always. What’s up?” After making sure his undershirt covered the gun securely, Chuck turned back to the room’s closet. He’d decided that Sarah telling him casual meant jeans, but he figured he should at least wear a nicer shirt instead one of the nerd shirts.

Ellie stepped around him and pulled out a dark-red button up with military-style pockets. “That one.”

“You think—”

“I’m a girl, Chuck, I know what girls like.”

“Red shirt it is.” Chuck took the shirt and pulled it on over his undershirt. He watched Ellie out of the corner of his eye. She had something on her mind, but clearly wasn’t ready to give it up yet. So he cleared his throat. “You’re okay with me dating your roommate, right?”

“You’re an adult, Chuck, you can date who you like.”

Hm, Chuck thought, she wasn’t okay. He turned to Ellie, and she sighed. “I like Sarah a lot,” she qualified. “I do. I think she’s great, and she really likes you, which is great.”

“I sense a ‘but’ in there,” Chuck said.

“But the ex-girlfriend you were stalking got shot in front of you three weeks ago.” Ellie chewed her bottom lip, her eyes troubled. “And you haven’t said a word about it.”

Chuck finished buttoning the shirt, a stalling tactic and he knew it, but he didn’t care. “I talked to Dr. Anton,” he said.

“You did?” 

“Yeah, Gwen’s been having me talk to him through video conference a couple of times a week now.” Gwen had wanted to have Dr. Anton flown to DC, but the bosses had put the kibosh on that one, claiming budget cuts. So Chuck had sat in the Davenport’s home office twice a week and talked to a face on a computer screen. It had actually been better than being in the same room as Dr. Anton.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Ellie asked.

Chuck pushed down the desire to shrug. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

Ellie gave him an exasperated look. “You’re my brother: it’s in your job description that you’re supposed to bother me.”

“You’ve got enough on your mind with your new job and being in DC,” he said. “You and Devon both. I didn’t see it as a big deal, not in the grand scheme of things.”

“Chuck, you’re a big deal, and you’ve been so quiet lately, I can never tell where your head is at.” Ellie frowned. “I’ve asked Sarah, but you know how she is, you practically have to play Chicken with her to get a real answer. Or outright dare her.”

Her words surprised a laugh out of him. “Very true,” Chuck said. He sat on the edge of the bed to pull his beloved chucks on. “The truth is, I don’t know how I feel about Jill because I feel a lot of things. Sometimes I’m angry about what she did, joining Fulcrum and never telling me about it, but who am I to judge? I didn’t tell her about the CIA. I was going to, but that’s not the point. And I’m angry that she wrote me that letter all those years ago, but even that’s weird because sometimes I thought, okay, I’m over it and other times I just wanted to sit outside her apartment and see her again. I didn’t even want to talk to her or be with her, I just wanted to…reassure myself that she was there.”

Chuck finished tying his shoe and switched to the other shoe. Ellie sat beside him on the bed and stayed silent. “The whole thing, it’s a mess,” Chuck continued after a minute. “She’s Fulcrum and I’m CIA, and even if she cared for me still, which I think she does, everything that’s happened can’t be undone. So I can’t just sit here and dwell on that.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “I’ve got too many other pressing neuroses for that.”

Ellie’s eyebrows went up. “And you think dating Sarah is going to help with those?”

“Probably not.” Chuck frowned. “She’s liked me a while, I think.”

“Mm-hmm,” Ellie said emphatically. When Chuck gave her a startled look, Ellie shrugged. “It was kind of obvious.”

“Yeah, I guess it was.” Chuck picked an invisible piece of lint off of the thigh of his jeans. When that did nothing to dispel the nervous energy that had been haranguing him all day, he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I never noticed.”

“Mm-hmm,” Ellie said again.

Chuck’s eyes narrowed. Ellie might have been able to read him like a book, but that didn’t mean such a trait couldn’t be reciprocated. “That’s what this is about,” he said after a few seconds of studying his sister. “You think I’m just doing this because of Sarah, not me. Because she’s got feelings for me, and I’m worried I’m going to lose her in my life if I don’t…go on this date.”

Ellie frowned. “I wouldn’t have put it quite like that.”

“But?”

“But yes, I suppose that’s a simplified version of it.”

“Man,” Chuck said, leaning back a little. “Sarah would kick your _ass_ if she heard you say that.”

“She could try.”

Chuck looked hard at his sister and after a moment’s study decided that Ellie meant every word. She really would face down the ninja-like warrior that had taken out a car full of Fulcrum agents almost on her own. Not for the first time, Chuck wondered if Bartowskis came with insanity embedded in the genes, or if it was just present in his generation.

“You’re right,” he said. “She wouldn’t hurt you.”

Ellie made a noise in the back of her throat that was so much like Casey’s “Duh” grunt that Chuck blinked. After a second, he relented. It had been a remarkably obvious thing to say. He supposed he should quit stalling.

“El, when I asked Sarah out, it was because I wanted to,” he said. “Not out of some obligation. Don’t get me wrong: Sarah’s beautiful and just about perfect, but dating her would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.” He paused to think about it. “Unless I really wanted to.”

“I just don’t want either of you to get hurt,” Ellie said. 

“And you think that’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know. It’s new territory.” Ellie let out a long sigh. “For all of us. DC, dating, working for the government. It’s bad timing all around.”

Chuck couldn’t deny that, but he remembered Russ Davenport’s words to him that night he’d run too far on the treadmill, so he stayed silent.

“I mean, you just had this happen with Jill, and now we’re out here, and you’re making this thing with Sarah official, and the timing’s just…”

“The timing sucks,” Chuck agreed. He clasped his hands, rubbing his palms together to dispel some of the nervous energy he’d been hiding pretty well all day. He didn’t look at his sister. “But the timing’s always going to suck.”

“Point,” Ellie said.

“And if not now, when?” Chuck pushed his hands through his hair, now well grown out past the buzz cut. The curl was starting to return to the ends.

Ellie was silent for a moment. “Very true,” she said slowly, as if measuring her words. Inexplicably, an impish grin appeared on her face. “Besides, I think we’re forgetting the very important fact that you’ve already been dating for months, so it’s nice you’ve made an honest woman out of Sarah.”

“Honest woman out of—” Chuck blinked as he abruptly choked on the words. “What are you talking about?”

Ellie reached out and straightened his collar. “You always were a bit oblivious when it came to this stuff.”

“I am not!”

“Let’s face it, you’ve been dating this woman for like two months.” Ellie shrugged, just a pert little bounce of the shoulders. She raised an eyebrow, daring Chuck to contradict her.

When he opened his mouth to do just that, however, he stopped. Too many instances of things, things he’d taken for granted that had just recently gained new meaning with the revelation that Sarah liked him, flashed through his mind. And when that list didn’t stop for quite awhile, he bit back the urge to groan. Finally, he said, in a measured voice, “When were people going to tell me I had a really hot girlfriend?”

“You’d think you would notice that yourself, wouldn’t you?” Ellie actually patted him on the head. “I love you dearly, brother mine, but you’re kind of clueless sometimes.”

It was, Chuck had to figure, probably the understatement of the year. He gave Ellie a mock-sour look and rose to collect his coat from the closet, since the time to leave was approaching. “Well, call it what you will, but tonight is a first date, so I’m going to treat it like one. Minus, hopefully, the Melinda Brock incident from the eleventh grade.”

“Just stay away from bad shellfish, and I’m sure it’ll be fine. Though I think Sarah wouldn’t be as put off by projectile vomiting as Melinda was.”

“I think I’ll follow your advice, as making street pizza on the first date can never be a good thing.”

“A first date with a spy. That’ll be interesting. Where are you two going tonight?”

“I don’t know. Sarah’s being secretive. I’m just hoping it’s somewhere far away from guns, knives, maces, battle-axes, and lounge singers.”

“Yes, right, the killer Elvis impression. Not for the faint of heart.” Ellie smiled and smoothed Chuck’s collar one last time. “You have a good time tonight, okay? And be safe.”

“Yes, Mom.” Chuck rolled his eyes good-naturedly, but endured the hug from Ellie before his sister left. Once he was alone, however, the ease disappeared, and he took a deep breath. Bad shellfish or no, he was about to go on his first date with Sarah Walker.

**14 DECEMBER 2007**   
**SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM**   
**20:53 EST**

Chuck couldn’t decide what was more impressive: the building all around him or the woman standing next to him. “I can’t believe you actually know somebody high enough in the hierarchy to bribe. I mean, wow. The chances…”

“I’d be a lousy spy if I didn’t make connections,” Sarah pointed out, and Chuck had to concede the point. “Seriously, it’s not a big deal.”

“We have the whole entire Smithsonian Air and Space museum to ourselves!” Chuck could hardly contain his glee, his eyes moving every which way in hopes of capturing every little detail he could about the cavernous building all around them. “How is that not a big deal!”

He heard Sarah laugh, and saw her throw up her hands out of the corner of his eye. “Okay,” she said, still laughing. “It’s a big deal. Got it. If I’d known how excited you were going to be about this, I’d have gotten us an extra hour.”

Chuck grinned at her. “This is great,” he said, meaning every syllable. “You’re great, but this is just so…well, to steal a phrase, _awesome_. C’mon.” Without thinking about it, he grabbed her hand and pulled her with him, eager to explore. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, housed in the National Mall, opened like a gaping airplane hangar, with jets and planes suspended from the ceiling and lining the walls as well. Chuck imagined that the center of the big, open floor would be filled with people during the day, and he would in no way be able to handle that, but after hours, the lights on at half-power, it was empty save for him and Sarah, and there was nothing to do but just drink it all in. 

He hauled on Sarah’s hand, pulling her from one exhibit to the next. He knew it was impossibly nerdy, but with each passing exhibit, there was something new to freak out over—how much bigger or smaller the planes looked in person, how he had once built a scale model of _The Spirit of St. Louis_ with his father, how _cool_ it was to be standing near the Apollo 11 Command Module “Columbia.”

“It’s so neat how we’ve come so far in such a short amount of time. I mean, we weren’t even flying planes for a hundred years, and we were in space,” he said, taking a picture of the module with his phone. Later on, once everything cleared up with their current identity crisis and Fulcrum, he’d send it to Morgan. He glanced over at Sarah and fought back a grin. Though she was doing her best to appear interested, he could see her eyes beginning to glaze. “I mean, think about what kind of minds and engineering went into figuring out how to make planes go faster, and how space works. The brilliance there…it’s astounding.”

“Mm-hmm,” Sarah said. She cleared her throat. “I mostly don’t think about that stuff until it doesn’t work.”

“Then you’re busy cursing it?”

“Pretty much.” 

“It’s a good philosophy to have. Oh, what’s in here?” And Chuck was off again, all but dragging Sarah behind him. He could hear her laughing, but he didn’t care. He was in the freaking Smithsonian. Even with somebody not as neat as Sarah, it would have been the coolest date ever. And having Sarah there, even if he suspected she was probably already bored with the displays all around them, was just icing on the cake.

“They almost had me declare an engineering major in college,” Sarah announced almost out of the blue as they wandered through the Early Flight gallery. 

“Really?” Surprise had Chuck twisting to look at her. “I mean, not that you’re not brilliant, it’s just a strange fit.”

“Something about my spatial awareness.” Sarah shrugged it off. “They thought it would translate well to engineering, but in the end, they decided languages were a better match.”

Chuck frowned. “They picked your major for you?”

“Of course they did. It wasn’t me going to college, it was Sarah Walker.”

“But aren’t _you_ Sarah Walker?”

Sarah moved a shoulder. They had left their coats by the door where Sarah’s contact, a janitor, had let them in, so she was dressed similar to Chuck—jeans and a nice shirt. Her outfit looked much better on her, in Chuck’s opinion. It was understated and casual, and it shouldn’t have spiked his heart-rate, all things considered, but he had been a little breathless ever since they’d left the Davenport estate.

“It just seems a bit much,” he said, frowning a little as he thought about it. “It’s really deep cover. Like, your whole life is. I mean, take your apartment, for example.”

Sarah looked like she might shrug again. “It was just a place to crash between missions.”

“But it’s not _you_.” They had gone there first, to Chuck’s surprise. He had expected to go to a restaurant, but Sarah’s apartment had been a much better fit. No need to worry about too many people there. Of course, upon discovering that it would just be him and Sarah alone at her apartment, the nerves had come out in full force, only to dissipate right away when Sarah flicked water at him while he’d helped set the table. They’d picked up food to go, and the meal had been just like any other they’d shared before, which had been both startling and comforting.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sarah said now. “I was never there long enough to care.”

“You need your own version of the Tron poster,” Chuck insisted.

Sarah smirked. “Whose room is it that actually has the Tron poster in it?”

Though the mention of Burbank hurt a little, Chuck dipped his head in acknowledgement. “But that’s because you and Ellie are strange. I’m going to confiscate that poster someday. Seriously, though, you need your own Tron poster in that apartment if you’re going to keep staying there.”

“I’m not.” Sarah stuck her free hand in her pocket and craned her neck to study the Wright Military Flyer. “It’s time for that last link to Sarah Walker in DC to disappear.”

“Oh,” Chuck said. An idea struck him. “Okay, so answer me this. If you could have picked your own major, what would it have been?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”

“Top of your head, dream major, go.”

“I don’t—”

“That’s now how this works. You’re supposed to say whatever comes to mind.” Chuck grinned at Sarah’s exasperated huff of breath. They continued to wander through the Early Flight exhibit, neither really paying attention to the museum. “So, lightning round. Right now, dream major.”

“I think I suck at this game.”

“I think you’re cheating by stalling to give yourself time to think or deflect.” Chuck made a buzzing noise. “Wrong answer. C’mon, if you could pick any major, what would it be? I won’t even make fun of you if it’s general studies.”

“Sure you will.” Sarah looked like she might be teasing herself. Chuck raised his eyebrows at her and waited until she heaved a gusty sigh. “Fine. Dance.”

“Say what now?”

Sarah didn’t look at him. “That’s my ‘dream major,’ as you put it.”

“Dance?”

“Dance,” Sarah confirmed. She looked a bit pink.

“I have never once seen you dance,” Chuck said after chewing on the side of his mouth for a minute.

Sarah raised her eyebrows. “You’ve never taken me dancing now, have you?”

“Touché. Are you any good?”

“I know my way around a dance floor.”

“So if I wanted to learn how to dance, I could ask you?”

Sarah cocked her head, obviously pretending to think about it. “I don’t know if I’m a good enough teacher for that,” she said, and smiled.

Chuck put his free hand over his heart and mimed being shot so outrageously that, had Sarah not been paying attention and grabbed his arm, he would have crashed into one of the exhibits. He bounced back onto his feet with a sheepish laugh. “Whoops. But you wound me, Sarah Walker, you really do.”

She was still smiling—and still holding his hand. “I’m sure you’ll get over it.”

“I may be scarred for life,” Chuck warned.

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s very traumatic, you know, being teased.”

“I’m sure it is.”

Chuck subsided with a grin. “So, how come you didn’t just declare yourself a dance major and say to hell with it?”

“I highly doubt the CIA would appreciate paying all that money to Harvard for a recruit to study dance.” Sarah’s voice was almost dry enough to cover up what sounded like an old undercurrent of pain.

Though he wanted to offer sympathy, he figured Sarah probably wouldn’t take it, so Chuck forced a grin. “That’s a bit short-sighted, don’t you think? I mean, where would Baryshnikov and Hines be without the power of dance? That’s right, still in Soviet Russia.”

Sarah laughed. “It’s not a big deal. I couldn’t have done anything with it anyway, so…” She dismissed it all with an absent gesture.

This was probably a cue to change the subject, Chuck thought, but natural curiosity got the better of him. “So what was it like actually being a Harvard student?” he asked. “I mean, aside from them picking your major. Did you actually have to do the homework or did they have a secret cabal of super nerdy spies just waiting at your every beck and call?”

It took a moment for Sarah to answer, which told him she was parsing her words carefully. He nearly raised his eyebrows. “Harvard and the CIA had an agreement,” she said. “If I chose, I could ignore the homework, or turn in a mediocre-quality version of it, and I would receive an average grade.”

“So you could choose not to do homework?”

“I had the option, yes.”

“That would be so amazing. I’d _never_ do homework, if that was the case. I’d just play video games all day.”

“Oh, don’t lie.” Sarah rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “You’d ignore the homework until the professor said something that sparked your interest, and then you’d have to read everything you could get your hands on about it, which would mean doing the homework, and since you’re a nerd, the extra credit, too.”

“I think you underestimate the power of video games,” Chuck said. “So did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Do your homework?”

“Yes. You had a better chance of becoming a field agent if you took the time to buy into your cover, and even though I’m not very book-smart and would never belong at Harvard, not in a million years, I had something to prove.”

Now it was Chuck’s turn to stay quiet for a minute. “So you did the homework, you say.”

“Yes.”

“And you took the tests, wrote the papers?”

“I did.” Sarah’s tone carried an unsaid “Where are you going with this?”

“And the grades you got on those, were they grades the CIA bought, or were the professors grading your stuff?”

“The CIA didn’t need to buy my grades,” Sarah said, her eyebrows drawing together.

“So if I’m to understand this, you did the work of a full-time student at Harvard, kept up, got pretty good grades, all of this on your own, and yet you could never belong at Harvard, not in a million years?” Chuck shook his head slowly. “Uh-huh. Right. And you call _me_ a nerd.”

“I’m not a nerd,” Sarah said.

“Fine. You’re an overachiever, then.”

“All right, I’m an—”

“Which is just another word for ‘outgoing nerd.’”

“Oh, shut up and look at the planes,” Sarah said, but she was smiling.

“I’d rather go look over there,” Chuck said, pointing across the main bay of the first floor. “Space stuff!”

“Of course. I’m kind of amazed we didn’t go there first.”

“I like to build up to it,” Chuck said sagely. He resisted the urge to look down at their joined hands, an urge he had been fighting ever since he’d grabbed Sarah’s hand. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to let him go. “How’d you get the idea for the Smithsonian anyway? It’s pretty much the most perfect thing ever.”

“Believe it or not, it wasn’t my idea.”

“Really?” Chuck furrowed his brow as he thought it over. “Whose was it? Ellie’s? Awesome’s? No, that can’t be right: there are no class five rapids.”

“Yours,” Sarah said, her smile almost secretive.

“Have I been talking in my sleep again?” Chuck narrowed his eyes. “Which, if I have, begs the very important question: have you been watching me sleep? Because I’m not gonna lie, just say the word Chuck or no, that’s honestly a little creepy.”

“Ha, no.” Sarah shoulder-bumped him as they headed into the Space Race gallery. “You mentioned you wanted to see the Smithsonian when Bryce and I came to see you in the bunker, remember?”

Chuck squinted as they passed the towering blue and white V-2 missile. Most of Sarah and Bryce’s visit had been seared into his memory, but time and all of the things that had happened to him in the past two and a half months had blurred things somewhat. “Honestly, no, I don’t remember that.”

Sarah moved a shoulder, and in the lowered light Chuck thought she might have looked a bit sheepish. “Yes, well, damn near photographic memory,” she said, tapping her temple like she always did.

“And might I say, I’m grateful for that? Up until the point I do something stupid because then I know you probably can’t forget it.” Chuck paused to think about it. “And we know my track record for doing stupid things.”

“I seriously doubt you have anything to worry about.”

“Right, right. Because apparently you think,” and Chuck raised both hands, even the one Sarah held, to make air quotes, “I am ‘all that and a bag of chips.’”

Sarah grinned, but didn’t reply. Chuck slowed to a stop to get a better look at the front node of the Apollo-Suyez Test Project, which was raised in the center of the room. He tucked about three or four nerdy outbursts to the back of his mind and focused instead on Sarah’s profile. “I have to say, this was a good idea ‘I’ had.” He used air quotes again.

“Yes.” Sarah turned her head to smile at him. “Clearly you’re a genius.”

“Clearly.”

“You’re trying not to nerd out right now, aren’t you?”

Chuck grinned. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only a little.”

“Can we go look at that?” Chuck pointed at a large bell-shaped object nearby. “Because if it’s what I think it is, it’s just so impressively _cool_.”

“And what do you think it is?” Sarah leaned forward slightly to read the exhibit nameplate as they approached. “A Soyuz TM-Ten?”

“Look at how burned it is. They say it got quite a bit crispy when it came back into the atmosphere, but I wasn’t expecting this much.” Chuck let go of Sarah’s hand to wander around the capsule, nearly letting out a nerdy gasp when he saw the chalked-up markings around the side. “Oh, and look, here’s where they signed it. I remember reading about this when I was, like, nine or ten. My dad got everything he could read on it, and I sneaked into his office and read it all when he was done with it. Manakov and Strekalov and a Japanese reporter who came on the next ship up landed in this.”

“Uh-huh,” Sarah said.

“Man, I was a nerd as a kid.” Chuck fumbled for his phone to take pictures of the capsule. He didn’t have to look at Sarah to know she was smiling again. “When they sent this up to Mir, there was a quail in it, you know.”

“A quail,” Sarah said, and it was almost not a question.

“Yeah, it laid an egg en route to the station.” Chuck grinned as he steadied his phone to take a picture. “Can you imagine how confusing that must have been for the quail? Though, yes, it’s a strange bird to pick to take into space.”

“I’d have gone for parrot myself,” Sarah said. Her voice was solemn but as she appeared at Chuck’s elbow, holding her hand out for the phone, her eyes were twinkling. She shooed him over to stand in front of the landing pod, and took a picture. When she handed him his phone back, their fingers brushed. They had been doing that a lot lately, Chuck thought. He didn’t jolt this time, at least. He just put his phone back in his pocket, took one last look at the Soyuz TM-Ten, and started wandering again. “What about you? Space-bird of choice?”

“You know, nobody ever gives enough love to the chicken-hawk, so I’d pick Henry.” Chuck glanced around the gallery, then looked at Sarah. “Is there anything in the Smithsonian you want to see? We’ve got to meet your contact in fifteen minutes, right?”

“Well.” Sarah nibbled on her lower lip and he waited for her to spit it out. She must have really been in a good mood; it took thirty seconds less than usual. “There’s an exhibit upstairs I might like to see, yes.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that? I didn’t know the Masters of Ginsu had an exhibit going on here.”

“Ha,” Sarah said, and much to Chuck’s interest, she turned a bit pink. He nearly slowed to a stop, but Sarah was still strolling at regular pace. He stretched his stride to keep up, just as she let out a huff of breath. “It’s the American Treasures exhibit. They’ve got Kermit and Dorothy’s shoes.”

Laughing right now, Chuck figured, was very dangerous. Manfully, he swallowed a chuckle and managed to ask, in an almost normal voice, “Kermit the frog?”

“And Dorothy’s shoes,” Sarah said pointedly.

“Yes, we know how you feel about your footwear. Dude, if Kermit’s here, why didn’t we start there? C’mon!” Chuck grabbed Sarah’s hand again and pulled, grinning over his shoulder at her. She rolled her eyes back, but she was still smiling. When Chuck turned to face forward, he spotted the water fountain, and his throat immediately went dry. “Time out,” he said, making the motion with both of his hands (and one of Sarah’s, by default). “Water break.”

“Okay. I’m going to go look at that…thing.” Sarah pointed. “The, um, orange-yellow thingie. Looks a bit like a twinkie.”

Chuck glanced over. “You mean the Breitling Orbiter Three Gondola?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“Of course. My mistake. Very well, then, make it so, number one.”

“What?”

“Uh…it’s kind of a bad joke, which you probably wouldn’t get anyway because you’re a very specific type of nerd. Basically, one of the guys that flew in it was named Bertrand Piccard and—”

“Weren’t you thirsty?” Sarah asked.

“Oh. Right.” Chuck looked down at their joined hands. “Okay, one, two, three, break.” He paused when nothing happened. “Uh, that means we let go now.”

“Does it?” Sarah wrinkled her nose at him. “Very well, if we must.”

“We must. I need that hand to work the water fountain.”

That was, Chuck thought as he headed toward the grouping of water fountains along the edge of the main bay, rather needlessly adorable. It more than explained why he was grinning like an idiot as he bent to get a drink of water from the adult-level fountain. He was at the freaking Smithsonian! Ranked by one sophomore Chuck Bartowski in 1997 as one of the top ten coolest places on the planet. And not only was he actually standing there, drinking Smithsonian water from a genuine Smithsonian fountain, but he was on a _date_ at the Smithsonian with what had to be the coolest woman in the world.

It didn’t really get much better than this.

The click of a gun safety being taken off sounded incredibly close to his head. Chuck moved his thumb slowly off of the water fountain button. 

“I knew,” he said as his hand crept across the front of the fountain and pressed the red button on the side of his watch, “this was sounding a little too good to be true.”

“Stand up,” said an oddly familiar voice. “Slowly, please. I don’t want there to be trouble.”

Chuck bit his lip before he could point out that eleven times out of ten, guns always led to trouble. He very carefully did as ordered, panic beginning to gnaw at his midsection. All of the sudden, it was far too open and dangerous inside the Smithsonian. Being around Sarah had helped keep the regular paranoia at bay, but now she wasn’t there, and he had some stranger with a gun pointed at the back of his head (or so he assumed, he couldn’t actually see the gun). And where the hell _was_ Sarah? He nearly turned to look at the Breitling Gondola, but if she was there, he didn’t want to give her position away to some mad gunman, and why the hell wasn’t she here already? She had a sixth sense when he was in danger, didn’t she? Okay, that was an ungracious thought. Getting taken at gunpoint at the water fountain was a bit much, even for him.

“Turn around,” the voice ordered. Chuck had a split second to wonder why he recognized the voice before he turned, and the flash hit him.

A jarred, blurry shot of an old clock with sickles for clock hands superimposed over an open palm. A red flag bordered in blue and containing a red star.

Physics textbooks. A woman working in a lab with test tubes and beakers. Microchips.

Kim Jong-il in a meeting.

A surveillance shot of two men trading documents and shaking hands, one looking surreptitious. 

The clock and palm once more.

Chuck blinked back the flash and stared in horror at Dr. Zarnow. Other than looking a bit like a Cold War B-movie villain and the revolver in his hand, the man actually seemed mildly pleasant. Chuck had to bite his tongue to keep from blurting out that the man had been selling government secrets to North Korea for years, since he got the feeling that that was the sort of thing he could get shot over.

He decided to play clueless. It had worked rather well for him before, after all.

“Um,” he said, holding his hands up in the air, level with his head. He could feel the tranq gun, which no longer seemed like a ridiculous insistence on Casey’s part, digging against the small of his back. “If it’s not too much, can I ask just one thing? It’s not a big deal, really, but why are you holding me at gunpoint again? Is this a hold-up? Do you want my wallet? I’ve got some cash—not much, admittedly, I don’t make _that_ much—and my credit cards are good for a few thousand, and I won’t call it in, I swear. Just, please don’t shoot anything in here. This is the Smithsonian, these are priceless artifacts.”

Dr. Zarnow smiled, and Chuck had to wonder if everything the man did looked sinister or if it was the gun in his hand casting aspersions over his appearance. He really did look like he could be a colleague of Max Zorin. The black trenchcoat wasn’t helping him much.

“My dear boy,” he said, “this has nothing to do with you.”

Chuck blinked. “Uh, what?”

“I’m not after you,” Zarnow said, rolling his eyes a little.

“But why n—oh. Does this mean you don’t want my wallet, then? Whew. So I can go now, yes?” Chuck, hoping against all hope, began to edge away, only for Zarnow to reach out and clamp a hand down on his shoulder.

Sarah, Chuck thought, was not going to like this.

“Not so fast,” Zarnow said. “This may have nothing to do with you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be useful. Now, where has your girlfriend gone?”

“My, uh…” Sarah, Chuck thought desperately in her direction since he didn’t want to look that way and give her location up, please stay far, far away. “What girlfriend?”

Of course, she didn’t listen to him despite her sometimes frightening ability to read his mind. “Right here, Zarnow,” Sarah’s voice said, and the woman herself appeared around the corner, her gun raised. Zarnow immediately shifted so that he had an arm around Chuck’s neck, pulling the taller man into a stoop with the gun barrel pointed at the underside of his jaw. Sarah’s eyes somehow darkened. “Let him go.”

“Oh, right,” Chuck said lamely, his words muffled by the gun. “That girlfriend.”

“Agent Lynch.” Dr. Zarnow sounded pleased, which set off warning bells in Chuck’s head. “So sorry to interrupt your date. It’s a pleasant evening, yes?”

“It was,” Sarah said, her voice even. “What do you want, Zarnow?”

“The identity of Patient X, of course. I would think it fairly obvious.”

“Not happening.”

They sounded like they had just sat down to a nice cup of tea, Chuck thought somewhat hysterically. But then, most tea parties didn’t involve gunplay, and he wasn’t sure exactly how many tea parties the Smithsonian actually hosted every year. He forced himself not to freak out. The logical part of his brain pointed out there was still a chance: Zarnow apparently had no idea that he was Patient X. The scientist obviously believed Chuck was actually “Agent Lynch’s” boyfriend. 

The other part of his brain, however, made the irrefutable argument that there was still a gun pointed at his head, and that was a very, very bad thing.

“Very well. If that’s the case, here is what _is_ going to happen.” Again, Zarnow sounded remarkably pleasant, like a proper bad guy giving a monologue should sound. “You’re going to put your gun on the ground.”

Sarah’s eyes flicked to Chuck and back. “And why should I?”

“Or else I shoot your boyfriend in the head, of course. I’m going to have to explain everything, aren’t I? Ah well. I suppose I must, since your boyfriend thought I was trying to mug him, of all things. Does he not know you work for the government, Agent Lynch?”

Again, Sarah’s eyes cut to Chuck. This time, he realized it was a cue. He did his best to swallow a surge of nausea and panic. “G-government?” he asked, putting as much fear as possible into his voice. “What’s he talking about, S—Karrin? You don’t work for the Smithsonian?” He thought about it for a second. “And why, for the love of God, do you have a gun? You brought a gun on our _date_?”

He’d oversold it. He could see the grimace on Sarah’s face, but she simply said, “Not the time, Cameron,” and adjusted her grip on the gun.

“Uh-oh,” Dr. Zarnow said, his tone gradually becoming more and more mocking. “Sounds like there’s rocks ahead in the relationship.”

“Thanks for the concern about our love life. If you were really worried, you would let go of my boyfriend.”

“You put the gun down and come with me, he doesn’t get harmed.”

“Karrin? What’s going on?” Chuck widened his eyes and looked to the left, at his watch, the face of which had a small beeping red light in it.

Sarah’s face never changed, but Chuck saw her eyes cut briefly to his watch. She had received the message. “Let him go, and I’ll put my gun down.”

“Do I look like I was born yesterday, Agent Lynch? I’m not releasing him until your gun is down.”

“Then we have a problem,” Sarah said, and Chuck bit his lip hard to keep from pointing out that she was stating the obvious.

Instead, he cleared his throat. “I have no idea what’s going on, but here’s a solution: why not do both at the same time? Whoa, crazy idea, right?”

Dr. Zarnow sounded amused. “He’s quite the chivalrous one, throwing you to the wolves to save himself, Agent.”

Chuck bristled. Pointing out that Sarah would rightfully kick Zarnow’s ass given the first and slightest opportunity, however, would have been counterproductive. Sarah answered before he could do so. “Eh, it’s a first date,” she said. “We’re still finding each others’ flaws. You let him go, I’ll put my gun down at the same time, got it?”

“Acceptable,” Zarnow said. “On the count of three?”

“One,” Sarah said, slowly kneeling. Zarnow’s hold on Chuck began to slacken as well. “Two. Three.”

Sarah set the gun on the ground. Zarnow shoved Chuck away from him so hard that Chuck stumbled forward and would have tripped if Sarah hadn’t stepped into his path and counterbalanced his weight. As he staggered, Chuck slipped his watch off. By the time he straightened and spun around to face Zarnow again, hands up, the watch was nowhere to be seen, but Sarah looked a bit furious.

Zarnow aimed his gun at Sarah’s chest. “Very good, Agent. Now, kick the gun away from you. We wouldn’t want you getting ideas. And hands up, just like your boyfriend, there’s a good agent.”

Zarnow really wasn’t long for this world, Chuck figured. He could practically hear Sarah grinding her teeth in frustration even as she did as ordered and kicked the gun away from her, back about ten feet. She raised her hands level with her shoulders and glared at Zarnow.

“Uh, now what?” Chuck asked into the pause that followed.

“Now Agent Lynch comes with me and you should probably find a new girlfriend. It’s her, it’s not you, but things just aren’t going to work out, I’m afraid.” Dr. Zarnow rolled his eyes and pointed the gun at Sarah more impatiently. “Cameron, is it? You seem nice enough, your obvious faults aside. Run along now while the grown-ups talk, hmm?”

Chuck bit off a retort that he had been an adult for several years, thank you very much, as he doubted that would really help his case. His glare deepened. He ignored the sensible half of his brain and instead did the most terrifying thing that came naturally to him.

He stepped between Sarah and Zarnow’s gun and said, “No.”

“ _Chuck_ ,” Sarah hissed under her breath. Zarnow probably wasn’t the only one not long for this world now, Chuck figured, but he ignored her, instead stretching his hands out, ostensibly as if to form a shield between the mad scientist and the CIA agent. “What are you _doing_?”

He heard the catch in her voice as she figured out exactly why he had moved in front of her. “Cameron, no, it’s okay, I’ll go with him, it’ll be fine,” she said in a louder voice, and actually tried to shove him out of the way. He felt a pressure against the small of his back, right above the waistline of his jeans. Chuck, however, hadn’t been working out every day for naught. He didn’t budge, not even when Sarah pushed a shoulder against his back in hopes of dislodging him before Zarnow tired of their game.

Indeed, the scientist didn’t disappoint. He heaved a lofty, put-upon sigh. “I didn’t want to have to do this,” he said, and Chuck had approximately a quarter of a second to wonder if the scientist had studied drama in college in order to make his threats even more sinister before Zarnow pointed the gun right at his forehead. “You seem like a nice boy, but I simply don’t have the time for heroics. Good-bye, Cameron.”


	40. Larger Than Real Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes. — _Mark Twain_

**14 DECEMBER 2007**   
**SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM**   
**21:46 EST**

Sarah slammed the palm of her left hand into the space between Chuck’s shoulder blades, giving him no choice but to go forward like an actor taking a bow. The room blurred. He let out a whoosh of breath in surprise. He felt the puff of air as Sarah swung the hand holding the tranq gun she’d taken from Chuck’s waistband around, intending to take out Zarnow.

She never got the chance. At least, Chuck never heard the _thwpp_ of the tranq gun going off.

He did, however, hear something hit the ground heavily, followed by the distinct thunk of something hitting skull. And even as he marveled at the strange turns his life had made that he would recognize a noise like that, he also heard the staggered thump of an unconscious body hitting the floor.

He nearly froze, but instinct made him look up. Collapsed on the ground was Dr. Jonas Zarnow.

And standing over the body, dressed in all black and smirking, was Bryce Larkin.

Chuck blinked.

Bryce Larkin did not disappear, which meant that he was not a hallucination. Chuck took a step back, only to bump into Sarah. She yanked him to the side. As one, they gaped at Bryce, who was rubbing the butt of the gun he’d used to pistol-whip Zarnow with an honest-to-God handkerchief.

Where the hell had he come from? 

“Hey, guys,” Bryce said, the grin broadening. He looked directly at Sarah. “Got your message. Did you miss me?”

Sarah, without missing a beat, shifted her aim a fraction and pulled the trigger. Twice.

In some distant part of his brain, Chuck entertained the thought that if he’d had a camera right then, pictures of Bryce’s shocked face would be circulating Facebook soon. The other spy looked down at the orange-fletched darts protruding from his chest, blinked, and said, “Huh, I’m still gonna take that as a yes,” before he collapsed into a boneless pile beside Dr. Zarnow.

For a full moment, stunned silence reigned. Finally, Sarah broke it. “Bastard,” she said.

Chuck looked at the two unconscious bodies on the ground, still dazed. What had just happened? “Which one?”

Sarah shot him a look: does it matter?

Chuck supposed it didn’t. “Where did he _come_ from?”

Sarah glanced up. They were still standing by the water fountains, over which there was a sign protruding from the wall, large enough for a man to stand on. After a second of squinting, Chuck could see where it was possible to get onto it from the second floor, if one didn’t mind a bit of jumping atop actual exhibits from the Smithsonian on the way to get there.

He felt a vicious stab of anger. Sarah hadn’t used enough tranq darts. What the _hell_ , Bryce?

Sarah knelt by Zarnow and checked for a pulse. Whatever she found seemed to make sense to her, given that she nodded. “I did not see that one coming,” she said, nodding at the inert scientist. She did not check Bryce for a pulse.

Chuck ignored the need to point out that Dr. Zarnow could easily play a shady KGB agent without even having to act much. “He was selling secrets to North Korea,” he said, and went to retrieve Sarah’s kicked gun.

She rose as he handed the gun over. “You flashed on him?”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t blurt it out?”

“Seemed prudent not to accuse the guy holding a gun at my head of selling state secrets,” Chuck pointed out. He winced when Sarah turned the tranq gun toward Zarnow’s prone form and fired once. But at least they no longer had to worry about him waking up and causing trouble. He took the tranq gun from Sarah and put it in its normal spot. “I figured out he didn’t know I was Patient X, so I decided to just keep my mouth shut, miracle of miracles.”

“Hm. Well, I’m grateful for that. Quick thinking.” Sarah scowled and tilted her head to the ceiling, resting it on the back of her neck. She heaved a groan while Chuck blinked at her in surprise. “He couldn’t have done this tomorrow? Damn it. I’d better call this in. Stand guard, okay? And give Casey a call. He’ll already be halfway here by this point, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” Chuck said.

“And don’t think we won’t be talking about this little stunt,” Sarah said, and slapped something against his chest as she stalked by, already pulling out her phone to make the necessary calls.

Chuck barely caught his wristwatch in time to keep it from clattering to the tiles. He thought he heard Sarah mutter something about teaching him to pickpocket being the death of her, but he wasn’t sure.

Right now, he figured the best thing to do was what he was told so he dialed Casey’s number. Like Sarah, he did not look at Bryce’s unconscious body. “Hey, Casey.”

“Bartowski, what the hell is going on?”

“Uh, we’re still at the Smithsonian and everything’s okay.” Chuck looked around. The half-lit spaceships and airplanes had looked so cool a few minutes before, but now there was too much to think about to properly marvel. “I’m fine, Sarah’s fine. Dr. Zarnow of Intersect Project fame is apparently a traitor, given that he came by to try and kidnap Sarah.”

“What? He kidnapped Walker?” 

“Didn’t I just say that—no, he didn’t. He’s unconscious now.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Chuck could hear traffic noise and wondered just how badly Casey was breaking the speed limit. Finally, the NSA agent spoke. “Should’ve let him get away with the blonde.”

Chuck sputtered. “I happen to be fond of the blonde!”

“That makes one of us. Walk me through what happened.”

“I’m not sure of the whole story, but Zarnow held me at gunpoint. He was planning to take Sarah and get the identity of Patient X. Oh, did I mention that he’s selling state secrets to North Korea and has been for years? Yeah, he’s got a nice, juicy file in the Intersect. Luckily, he didn’t realize Patient X was me. He almost had us, but Bryce knocked him out and—”

“Whoa,” Casey said. “Back that trolley right up, Bartowski. Did you say Larkin knocked Zarnow out?”

“Yeah, he just magically showed up. And he jumped off a few priceless artifacts to do so.” Chuck glanced down at the form of Bryce Larkin, super-spy, once-suspected traitor, and his college best friend. Oh, and he remembered, maybe the ex to the woman he was dating right now. As if things weren’t complicated enough. “But don’t worry, Sarah tranqed him.”

There was a bark of laughter over the phone line. “Nice one, Walker.”

“Yeah, she’s calling in scene clean-up right now.”

“All right. My ETA is twenty minutes, stay put and listen to Walker.” As usual, Casey didn’t say good-bye before he hung up. 

Chuck shrugged to himself and tucked the phone in his pocket just as Sarah came striding back. She still looked annoyed. “Casey’s about twenty minutes out,” he said. “I forget. Does the Crown Vic in DC have Nitrous Oxide or not?”

“I think that’s just the L.A. model,” Sarah said without looking at him. She was frowning down at Bryce and Zarnow. “Why did Bryce come _here_? How long was he following us?”

“Not too long, I hope.” Chuck attempted a weak smile, though his head was spinning and there was far too much space inside the Smithsonian, and he was standing over two unconscious people. “I distinctly recall nerding out over a cosmonaut landing capsule for a good ten minutes, and I’m not sure I can live that down.”

Sarah waved a hand absently at that. “I thought it was cute.”

“Cute,” Chuck echoed without enthusiasm. “Great.”

Sarah looked up to squint at him. “Are you okay? I hit you kind of hard.”

“It’s really okay, a bruised spinal column is nothing compared to my usual amount of injury whenever gunplay is involved.” Chuck made a deliberate point of shrugging, though he could still feel a dull ache where Sarah had hit him. “It’s fine, I promise. No permanent damage.”

“Good.” Worry immediately vanished from Sarah’s face. Chuck heard a distinct voice in the back of his head say, Uh-oh. “Let’s talk about the watch.”

He winced. “Do we have to?”

“That watch,” Sarah said, her voice even and measured, “is there to protect you, not me. It stays on your wrist at all times. What part of that wasn’t clear?”

He normally would have apologized at this point, Chuck thought. But right now, he could feel annoyance beginning to heat up. He straightened his shoulders. “Zarnow was going to take you, not me. And for all intents and purposes, it looked like you were going to let him, ergo you needed the homing beacon more than I did. I made an executive decision.”

“I had the situation under control,” Sarah said through what sounded like clenched teeth.

“It didn’t look under control.”

“Well, it was!”

“What if he’d taken you and you didn’t have the watch? We’d never have found you, Sarah. You’d be dead.” The thought terrified him. Or maybe he was coming down from the adrenaline. Either way, Chuck’s knees went a little watery, but he didn’t back down. “And it’s not like I was going anywhere, so the watch didn’t really matter for me. I mean, until fifteen minutes ago, war planes and missiles and bomb casings aside, the Smithsonian was one of the safest places on the planet. You, on the other hand, were going to let yourself be taken by a B-movie mad scientist, which is, for the record, _not_ anywhere near as safe as the Smithsonian!” 

Sarah glared. “You don’t get to make those decisions, Chuck. You’re the Intersect, your safety is top priority, not mine.”

“Sarah, please.” Chuck shoved his hands into his pockets and gave Sarah a “get real” look. “How has it not occurred to you that _you_ are part of my safety? If you’re not safe, I’m not safe. Seriously. If something happens to you, my brain will literally stop working and the government will have lost not only one of their best agents but their precious Intersect as well.” He scowled. He really did want to kick something, but it seemed unfair to Bryce or Zarnow, even if one had potentially damaged priceless aeronautical artifacts and the other had tried to shoot him and his date. “Not that that was why I gave you the freaking watch. I just wanted you safe, okay? And gah, I’m done talking about this. I have the watch back, the bad guy is now drooling on the floor, it’s over and done with.” He glanced over at the sound of the doors to the museum opening. “And it looks like the clean-up crew in DC is scarily fast.”

When he looked back, Sarah no longer seemed furious. Instead, she had an inscrutable look on her face, and she was studying him intently, her brows drawn together. Finally, she let out a sigh and scrubbed her hands over her face. She looked a little overwhelmed. “Maybe I need a watch.”

“What?” 

Sarah gestured down at the floor. “This sort of thing is going to keep happening to us, isn’t it, after all? We seriously have the worst luck on the planet.”

“Maybe we should just look at it as being unique. How many people do you know that can claim their first date was interrupted by a mad scientist and a…” Chuck looked down at his old best friend. “Whatever Bryce is.”

“Very true.” Something flickered across Sarah’s face. “I’m only going to say this once: you may not like it, but your safety matters more than mine.” She held up a finger when he opened his mouth to protest. “But even so, I think I should have a watch like yours. So that tonight doesn’t happen again.”

“And Casey?” Chuck asked.

Sarah smiled and shrugged. “And Casey, too.”

“Done.” It was, Chuck thought, as much of an apology as he was going to get, and he was fine with that. He answered Sarah’s smile. “Do you want me around for the clean-up?”

“Probably best if you’re not here.”

“All right, I’ll be waiting for you up by Kermit.” At Sarah’s skeptical look, Chuck shrugged. “What? Frogs need love, too.”

**14 DECEMBER 2007**   
**SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM**   
**22:58 EST**

The problem with waiting for Casey and Sarah was that it gave Chuck time to think. Far, far too much time to think. He wandered, as there were solar system galleries upstairs, but as it became more obvious that Casey might look for him, Chuck planted himself in front of the display of Kermit and decided to wait. And with nothing to keep his thoughts occupied, they whirled a million miles a minute.

Overruling almost everything was aggravation very similar to Sarah’s. He’d agreed wholeheartedly with her annoyed, “They couldn’t have done this tomorrow? Damn it.” The date had been going much better than any Chuck Bartowski date ever. He’d relaxed enough that most of the edginess driving his past two weeks had vanished, he was at the Smithsonian, and he was there with _Sarah Walker_. The date had been _fun_ in a way that made him feel faintly ridiculous, like a contact high. He had no idea if things had been leading anywhere—Sarah was still a little hard to read, and even now he could feels the nerves gnawing at him—but damn it, Zarnow.

And Bryce. Bryce freaking Larkin.

 _Got your message_.

Chuck should have been happy to see his friend. After all, Bryce wasn’t a traitor; he was unorthodox and a bit of what the agency called a grandstanding cowboy, but he hadn’t committed treason. He hadn’t given the Intersect to Fulcrum. He’d given it to Chuck. He’d driven Sarah Walker back into Chuck’s life and pulled Chuck from the bunker. Even if the Intersect put Chuck in constant danger, he should at least be grateful for that much, right?

But Chuck could only think about the argument and talk in the park nearly two months before, when he had asked Sarah exactly what happened between the partners, and he had officially met Sarah the Ice Queen. And it was stupid to think about that when there were important matters of national security being handled downstairs, but he couldn’t help but wonder. Had Sarah and Bryce been a thing? What did that mean, now that Bryce was back? Logically, in his head, he knew that Sarah was furious at Bryce, and that she had made it clear time and again she liked Chuck, but…

He was freaking Bryce Larkin.

Bryce didn’t pause instinctively in doorways and check empty rooms for danger out of thin air. He didn’t need to be coaxed or coerced into going outside, or to be constantly watched for fear of all hell breaking loose. Bryce could do things like take Sarah dancing and he had always been the one with the devastatingly good looks, who always got the pretty girls over Chuck until Jill had come along. 

What happened once Sarah got over her fury? Or Bryce gave her the come-hither look that had felled entire legions of Stanford coeds? Or—could you get any more pathetic, Bartowski? Casey’s voice sounded in Chuck’s brain. You were just held at gunpoint by a mad scientist who was going to kidnap your date in order to find _you_ , and you’re worrying about something Sarah might or might not feel for Pretty Boy Larkin.

As if Casey had the ability to read minds, the man himself appeared around the corner, wearing the casual Casey look of a polo shirt with creases sharp enough to cut and dark jeans. He grunted when he spotted Chuck. “Couldn’t even make it through one date without there being a national emergency?”

Chuck climbed to his feet. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

Casey’s glare was more of the grumpy than angry variety. “It was my night off.”

“I tried to keep it that way, I really did, but then I remembered your threat about what happens if I don’t push the panic button.” Chuck shoved his hands in his pockets and scowled at the ground. “Something about how even if my fingers are bloody nubs, I’m still supposed to push the button with my nose? Ringing any bells?”

“Heh, glad to see Walker’s not the only cranky one,” Casey said. He paused as he looked over at Kermit. “I expected him to be bigger.”

“He looks bigger on TV,” Chuck agreed.

Casey made a “hmm” noise. “Good work alerting me,” he said. “Starting to use your brain for something besides a database for useless geek information.”

“And the Intersect, of course,” Chuck said, and almost flinched when Casey turned a bland stare his way. He cleared his throat. “What’s happening?”

“They’re taking Zarnow into custody, and in a couple of days, somebody will stumble over the information that he’s been selling secrets to the North Koreans.” 

“Why a couple of days?”

“Don’t want him realizing you’re Patient X, do we?” 

“Yeah, I guess not.” Chuck didn’t look away from Kermit. “And Bryce?”

“Larkin will be out for a few hours, thanks to Walker. They’re putting him in the same happy hotel they billeted you and Walker in back in October.” 

Federal detention, Chuck realized. He frowned.

“Just for the record, one of the clean-up crew recognized Walker, and they’re downstairs laying bets on her mystery date.” Casey sounded almost gleeful. “So when we leave, I’d stand up straighter, if I were you. Try not to make everybody think Walker’s a lesbian.”

“You’re an asshole,” Chuck told him.

Casey’s replying grunt: you got that right. “Ready to go?”

Chuck cast one last regretful look around the Smithsonian. He would come back someday with at least six or seven hours to explore, he decided. “Yeah,” he said, turning away from Kermit. His scowl deepened when Casey snickered at him for straightening up, but the men didn’t say anything else as they headed for the stairs. They met Sarah on the landing halfway down, and Chuck nearly jumped. Great, he thought. He was back to being edgy around Sarah.

She didn’t acknowledge the reaction. Instead, she just glanced at Chuck swiftly, her expression hard to decipher, and turned to Casey. “Could you give us a minute?”

“I’ll meet you at the entrance,” Casey told Chuck, and left without a word to Sarah.

“Such a happy man,” Chuck said once he had left. He swiveled to face Sarah, ignoring the butterflies in his stomach. “What’s up?”

“Let’s, ah, walk and talk. The sooner we clear out of here, the better.” Sarah surprised Chuck by looping her arm through his. It was a favorite move of hers, but for some reason, it made him jolt. Sarah gave him a strange look. “Are you okay? Is the space getting to you?”

Chuck nearly lied, but caught the look on Sarah’s face. “A little,” he confessed. “But it’s not a big deal. I’m sorry about the date.”

“Not your fault. Possibly mine, though. I should have noticed a tail.” Sarah sighed as they reached the base of the stairs. “I think Zarnow may have been watching my apartment.”

“Clearly he has a rocking social life if he’s staking out an apartment on a Friday night,” Chuck said. “Even so, I’m more concerned that you’ve been working with this man for two weeks and you never once looked at him and thought, ‘Wow, you would make a great cohort to Snidely Whiplash.’”

“A,” Sarah said, “that’s stereotyping and b, cohort? Really?”

“It’s a word that doesn’t get enough use, I think.” They cut across the main bay, where there were several men in ubiquitous black suits carefully sweeping the Smithsonian for prints. Chuck wanted to warn them to be careful, to not hurt any of the artifacts, but it looked like they knew what they were doing. Still, it was a bit odd, considering that Chuck didn’t think they had actually touched anything. Better safe than sorry, he figured. He imagined Beckman and Graham would be less than thrilled if the national news flashed his mug shot for breaking into the Smithsonian. And Sarah’s career as an undercover agent would definitely be over with that sort of media attention. “Besides, we’ve been watching for Fulcrum so much, how were we supposed to know that one of the top scientific minds in the NSA is apparently a major traitor? That’s, like, way outside of our wheelhouse.”

Sarah made a grumbling noise under her breath. “Our wheelhouse just seems to be Murphy’s Law in general.”

“Well, I can’t argue with that.”

Sarah rubbed her free hand over her forehead and down her face. “I have a favor to ask you.”

“Sure, name it.”

Sarah reached into her pocket and pulled out her keys. “Take my car back? I’ve got to go into the office and sort out everything that happened with Zarnow, and I want to ride over in the car with Bryce in case he wakes up.”

“Oh,” Chuck said. “Bryce.”

Sarah winced. “Which is something we need to talk about, but unfortunately, now’s really not the time.”

“It’s okay,” Chuck heard himself say. “I understand.” He thought for a second and the nature of Sarah’s favor caught up to him. “Whoa, whoa, wait a second.”

“What?” Sarah glanced around, alarmed and ready for danger.

“Did you say you wanted me to take _your_ car?”

“Yes, why? What’s wrong with that?”

“This is not just any car we’re talking about here. It’s a Porsche. What happens if I mess it up?”

“Chuck?” Sarah actually stopped and turned him to face her, putting her hands just above his elbows like she often did. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t scratch it, and I won’t have to kill you and hide your body in a quarry, okay?”

Chuck gave her a sour look. “You’re a big help.”

“I’m joking.” Sarah hit him lightly above the elbow. “You’re a great driver, you’ll be fine, and if you scratch it, I have insurance. Seriously, don’t worry. Though, actually, try not to crash it. The car’s replaceable, you’re not.”

“Okay.” Chuck drew in a deep breath as he took the keys from her. 

“Good. Thank you. You’d better go.” Sarah squeezed his arms once before she let go and stepped back, looking regretful. “Don’t want Casey to get too impatient.”

“Right.” Chuck cleared his throat. He’d had awkward good-byes on first dates before—wasn’t that half the point of high school?—but this took the cake. He would see Sarah in the morning, she was his partner, they hadn’t really discussed what dating actually meant, there were government types wandering around that could turn the corner and find them any minute. Did they hug? Was this a hand-shake good-bye sort of thing? Did people actually shake hands when they’d known each other this long? He had no clue what to do now.

In the end, he just cleared his throat and took a step back, away from Sarah. “Right,” he said again. “I’ll go do that now. I’ll see you back at the house?”

“Probably not. I’ll just crash at headquarters. Dave keeps a few spare cots in the Den.” Sarah pushed her hands through her hair—which she had left down for the date so that it fell around her face in sunny ringlets—and shook her head yet again. “I’d better go before the car leaves without me. Good-night, Chuck.”

And that solved the problem of how to end the date, Chuck supposed. “Good-night,” he said, and turned to head toward Casey. He tried not to let his shoulders droop with disappointment. What the hell had he been expecting? Their date had ended at gunpoint, and not only was Sarah’s maybe-ex back in their lives, but Sarah had to go to work.

 _What on earth has misguided you so badly that you believe you’ll ever be cursed with normality?_ Ellie’s words nearly made him smile, even if there wasn’t much humor in the expression.

He was about to round the corner to head toward the entrance where Casey no doubt awaited him when he heard running footsteps behind him, and Sarah’s voice. “Chuck!”

Chuck turned, half reaching for the tranq gun in case zombies had overtaken the Smithsonian. “What? What is it?” he asked as Sarah skidded to a halt in front of him.

“Nothing.” She seemed oddly breathless. “I just forgot something.”

“What—” Chuck started to ask before Sarah startled him by leaning forward and kissing him.

He froze for either a split second or an eternity. He’d made jokes about Sarah shutting down his brain before, but never like this. All thought just stopped in its tracks, except for one concrete, terrifying, thrilling thought: Sarah Walker was kissing him. And holy hell was it better than any single one of his fantasies. There wasn’t anything inherently dirty about the kiss like in his daydreams; it was sweet and almost breezy. His hands lifted, but he had no idea where was considered “safe,” so he just let them fall to his side, and all brain function ceased. 

Sarah broke the kiss first, leaning back. As Chuck blinked rather stupidly at her, her smile blossomed. “Despite everything, I had a good time tonight,” she told him.

Chuck wasn’t sure brain activity would return for hours, let alone the ability to speak, so he just nodded. For some reason, this made Sarah’s smile widen before she took off toward the crime scene, jogging a bit. She looked back to flash another grin at him before she rounded the corner.

Chuck stayed exactly where he was until rational thought returned. Only then did the grin start to bloom. By the time he had reached Casey at the entrance a couple of minutes later, he was smiling widely enough that the NSA agent rolled his eyes. “What’re you so happy about?”

Though he was tempted to tell the truth, Chuck held up the car keys. “She let me drive.”

**15 DECEMBER 2007**   
**THE DAVE CAVE**   
**10:48 EST**

“Okay,” Chuck said, fighting back a yawn. “I understand why _I’m_ at work on a Saturday, as I’ve got no choice since both of my handlers—currently absent or not—are here, but what I don’t get is why _you_ are. And maybe I should have mentioned this earlier.”

Digital Dave didn’t look up from the blueprints spread across the guts of ten other electronic devices on his side of the Cave. “Josie took the girls to Connecticut this weekend, and the house was too quiet.” He scowled. “Why the hell are you yawning so much? You’re making me yawn.”

“Sorry,” Chuck said and yawned again, wincing when Dave mock-scowled at him. “Sorry! Really, I didn’t sleep much last night. I’m sorry.”

And that was the honest truth. The kiss from Sarah had been enough to make him float home, but over the drive between the Smithsonian and the Davenports’, the two percent of his brain that hadn’t been focused on getting Sarah’s car back in one piece had started in with doubts and fears and just wondering what the hell kind of move Bryce was trying to pull. 

Why had he come back? He’d made it obvious that he hadn’t trusted Sarah or Casey, so why on earth would he reveal himself to Chuck and Sarah on the date? Of course, that may have been because of him, Chuck realized. They had been in danger and Bryce Larkin was blessed with a hero gene that required him to save the day in grandiose fashion every once in awhile. Maybe he’d thought the situation with Zarnow was too dire to stay hidden over, though it made Chuck a bit nauseated to think that Bryce might have been tailing them for the entire date. And vaguely violated, now that he thought about it.

And it was foolish but his traitorous brain couldn’t help but wonder exactly what Bryce had been to Sarah, which hadn’t exactly led to much sleep on his part. Around three o’clock, he’d hopped on X-Box Live with Morgan and had spent a couple of hours fragging noobs. It had helped him feel better. Somewhat.

Now, Dave gave him another annoyed look as he yawned again. “Pass me that, would you?” He pointed at the tiny screwdriver that had rolled onto Chuck’s side of the worktable. Chuck obligingly rolled it back.

It had been an education to work in the den. He’d made friends among the engineers and tech-nerds once they’d stopped treating him like, in their words, “the reincarnation of MacGyver,” so he was actually rather comfortable there now. Sure, it had taken a couple of days to clear a space where he could work in peace and half of the Dave Cave still looked like the result of an unfortunate explosion, but the other half was neat, tidy, dust-free. There was a rolling chair in the corner that neither nerd used. It was reserved for Casey or Sarah, whichever agent was assigned to hang around Chuck that day.

Today, however, the chair was empty.

“Worked out that bug in the Fulcruminator last night,” Dave said as he fiddled a new piece onto the transponder he was fussing with.

Chuck looked up from his laptop. “Oh yeah?”

“I tested it this morning. It didn’t set off the system, but it did alter the code enough that…”

“Still could be a problem?”

“Once in a bajillion, maybe,” Dave said. “I know, I know. Still not worth the risk. I think, once we get past that glitch, though, it’ll be ready to be field-tested.”

“Be nice if we had an actual facility to field-test it on,” Chuck grumbled. They had searched high and low for any sign of Krolik Enterprises in security systems across the country, but Fulcrum proved better at hiding it than they had suspected. Dave, combing the patents system, had found a cell phone prototype that looked like it might share properties with the Fulcrum system they had hacked, so they had assembled a phone from the plans and had tested various versions of the Fulcruminator on it, but Chuck didn’t want to give the device to his team until he was absolutely sure it was perfect.

“From the sound of it, if we wanted to actually field test it, we could just spin you in a circle and have you point somewhere on a map,” Dave offered, smiling.

“Or just send me to a random address,” Chuck agreed. “It would be some kind of secret Fulcrum base, with my luck.”

“No, with your luck, the Fulcruminator would only not work, but it would do the opposite and alert everybody in the Fulcrum network that you’re onto them.”

Chuck had to laugh. “I should take it to my high school reunion or something. I can guarantee half of the people I went to high school with read the Evil Overlord list.” 

“Get a lot of swirlies in your day?” Dave asked. They looked over at the sound of high heels clicking on the tile heading toward the Dave Cave. “Yours or mine?” Dave asked.

“Mine,” Chuck sighed. After two weeks, he would recognize Vespa Weier’s quickstep anywhere. “Hello, Vespa Weier. How can we help you today?”

“Agent Lynch,” Vespa Weier stressed, even though every single member of Dave’s department knew him as Chuck, “you can just call me Agent Weier. I’m here to escort you to a meeting. Agent Lynch and Major Lynch are already there.” 

“Guess that’s my cue.” Chuck bade farewell to Dave, picked up his suit jacket, and followed the diminutive assistant out of the lab, walking the by-now familiar path to the conference room where they met with Graham and Beckman. He and Casey had been summoned to the CIA headquarters just after eight that morning, and Casey had been in the meeting ever since. Chuck had no idea what they were talking about and why they didn’t want him there, but he had kept himself occupied in the Dave Cave, trying not to think about it.

“Any idea what they want to see me for?” he asked Vespa Weier.

She shot him a disapproving look. “That’s not my job to know, Agent Lynch.”

Chuck entertained the thought once again that Sarah wouldn’t be the only one glad to see Vespa Weier gone.

Graham’s secretary, another unfortunate soul stuck working on a Saturday, waved Chuck through without looking up from her magazine. Chuck knocked hesitantly on the door, took a deep breath, and entered.

The first thing he saw was Sarah. He figured it would always be that way: something about the hair, and the face, and the fact that it was Sarah. She’d found a change of clothes at some point since the night before, for she wore a gray business suit and skirt now, and her hair was pulled back. She looked over from her seat at the table to give him a brief, businesslike smile.

Before he could return the smile, Chuck faltered. Sitting a couple of chairs away from Sarah at the conference table was Bryce.

Casey cleared his throat, and Chuck jolted. The other man stood just inside the doorway, arms folded over his chest. “Catching flies, Bartowski?”

“Uh, no. No, I’m not.” Chuck stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Neither Graham nor Beckman was present, Chuck saw now. It was only the Prometheus team…and Bryce.

Chuck’s ex-best friend turned in his chair and faced him. Unlike Sarah, he was still wearing the same clothing from the night before, all black. His hair looked finger-combed at best, and there were circles under his eyes. Still, his smile seemed genuine. “Hey, Chuck.”

“Uh, hey Bryce.” Chuck wanted to clear his throat, but he didn’t dare. It might have been foolish to feel nervous—this was his ex-best friend, after all—but in all honesty, he’d stopped knowing Bryce’s game-plan the minute he’d opened the Intersect email. Chuck warily took a seat and asked, “How’s your head?”

“My head?” 

“Yeah, you hit it pretty hard when Sarah…shot you…” Chuck trailed off, glancing at Sarah and trying to figure out if this was a taboo subject or not, but she was paging through a folder in front of him, and didn’t look up. Dread began to eat through his stomach. He attempted to fight it with humor. “It made quite a hollow thud.”

Bryce laughed. It sounded forced. “Yeah, I’m sure it did.”

“Where are—where are the General and the Director?” Chuck swiveled his chair around, as if expecting them to appear in the corners of the room.

“They had to take a call.” Sarah glanced swiftly at Chuck, and he had a hard time reading her expression. “How’s Dave?”

“He’s good.” Chuck stopped before he could update Casey and Sarah on the latest Fulcruminator news. He had no idea what he could and couldn’t say in front of Bryce. He had no idea why Bryce was even in the room with them. Hadn’t Casey said something about throwing him in a detention cell? But Bryce wasn’t even wearing handcuffs. Not that Chuck trusted him to get far or try anything in the same room with Sarah and Casey, but it was a bit strange. 

He stole a glance at Sarah, who was once again focusing on the folder. Was that really the same woman that had kissed him the night before? She seemed so reserved. It made him want to scoot his chair around Bryce and read over her shoulder until she swatted at him for it. Anything to break the ice.

But he didn’t. He said nothing, Bryce said nothing, Sarah said nothing. Casey stood by the door and smirked at all of them, possibly and probably enjoying their discomfort a little too much.

When the door opened to admit General Beckman and Director Graham, Chuck imagined he wasn’t the only one that let out a sigh of relief. Like the others, he rose to his feet. It wasn’t precisely his old, almost-forgotten Army training. It was simply that the two of them, even with their absurd height difference, held enough authority to demand it, possibly because even though it was the weekend, they were each as starched and pressed as ever. Graham waved at them to be seated. Casey took the chair to Chuck’s right, the farthest chair from Bryce. Chuck could almost hear him growl at the CIA agent as he sat down.

It made him feel both better, and petty for feeling better.

“Agent Bartowski, we apologize for the inconvenience of you needing to come in on a Saturday,” Graham said in such a droll tone that Chuck almost believed him. “You have Agent Larkin to thank for that.”

Bryce’s smirk looked tired. “Hey, sometimes we all need reminders that the world exists outside of nine to five, Monday to Friday.”

Beckman killed all attempt at humor with a less-than-impressed expression. “We thank you for that, Agent Larkin.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bryce said. He didn’t shrink down in his seat like Chuck would have. Chuck wanted to scowl.

“That little attempt at levity aside, we have a very important matter to discuss today.” Graham’s gaze swept over the four of them gathered opposite the conference table from him. “The future of Prometheus.”

It had to be something about his deep voice that made everything sound more dramatic, Chuck figured idly in the back of his mind, even while the rest of him sat up to listen. After two and a half weeks of being in limbo, he was eager and dreading any and all information the bosses could give them.

“There has been no activity on any of the identities, real or implied, of the Prometheus team or your residences in Burbank. Agent Larkin has likewise confirmed that he has not heard any suspicious chatter involving Prometheus. It’s likely you three will be able to return to your base very soon once a couple more things check out.”

Chuck nearly sagged back in his seat with relief. The team was going back to Burbank. He almost wanted to get up and dance.

“Your mission objectives will not change,” Beckman said, taking up the thread of the briefing with ease. “Your primary objective will be uncovering and eradicating the threat that Fulcrum poses to national security, as well as continuing to utilize the Intersect to detect other threats.

“Only now you will have an extra team member.”

Chuck felt twin stabs of hope and disappointment. Bryce was going to be stationed in Burbank with them? It would be awesome having his best friend around again, but…

He didn’t look at Sarah.

“After speaking with Agent Larkin this morning, we’ve determined that his actions in regards to Operation Sand Wall in no way indicate treason.” Beckman looked almost displeased at that. “As of right now, he will be joining Operation Prometheus and aiding in its quest to destroy the Fulcrum threat.”

Casey grunted. If Chuck hand-waved it hard enough, he could translate the noise as “Welcome to the team,” but he doubted it.

“What will Bry—Agent Larkin’s role on the team be?” Chuck asked, surprising himself. 

“I’m the bait,” Bryce said, smiling a little. “I’m going to make everybody think I’m the Intersect.”

Chuck gaped. Graham cleared his throat. “Agent Larkin will go deep undercover in hopes of drawing out the Fulcrum threat. He’ll rendezvous with our Fulcrum asset prior to that. Only General Beckman, the three of you, and myself will have a way to contact Agent Larkin.”

The Fulcrum asset, Chuck realized. They meant Jill.

Bryce swung his chair around toward Sarah, facing away from Chuck as he did so. “Last chance to come with me,” he said, and Chuck imagined a cocky look on his face.

Chuck’s hand, thankfully hidden under the table, tightened into a fist.

But Sarah just gave Bryce a cool look. “I’m good, thanks.” Her tone made Siberia seem warm.

“Agent Walker will remain with Major Casey and Agent Bartowski where she’s assigned, Agent Larkin,” Graham said.

It was probably Chuck’s imagination, but Bryce straightened his shoulders just a hair. “Yes, sir.”

“We expect to see you here Monday at oh eight hundred for a final team briefing, but until then, the Director and I are satisfied with what has been discussed today.” Now it was Beckman’s turn to give each of the team members a steely, assessing look. The only one unperturbed seemed to be Casey. “It’s the weekend, and I expect you’ll act accordingly. If you’ll wait behind a moment, Agent Larkin? We would like to speak to you alone before we arrange transportation to your hotel.”

“Certainly, General.” Bryce glanced at his new teammates. “See you Monday?”

Sarah and Casey gave him nods. Chuck waved, and the three made their good-byes to the bosses before they headed out. 

Casey waited until they were out of earshot before he glanced at his partners. Whatever he saw on Sarah’s face made him sigh. “I guess I’ll go warm up the car.”

“Thank you, Major,” Sarah told him. Casey gave a wordless grumble and left. Sarah turned to Chuck. “I’m sorry, if I’d been able to text you, I would have warned you. I had no idea the bosses were going to add Bryce to the team like that.”

Chuck forced himself to shrug, and the move almost came off as natural. He hoped. “It’s not a big deal. It makes sense. I mean, Bryce was in the Intersect room right before it blew up. If there’s anybody that makes sense to be the Intersect, it would be that guy.”

“Yes, because life makes sense,” Sarah said dryly.

“Where’d you get the change of clothes?” Chuck eyed the hem of her skirt.

“My locker.” 

“Oh.”

Sarah finally let loose the yawn Chuck had seen her suppress three times in the meeting as she pulled on her overcoat and scarf. “You look like you got less sleep than I did,” she said as they hit the front door.

Chuck waggled a hand as he tugged on his gloves. “Had a lot on my mind.”

“Yeah, I get that. Listen, about last night…”

Chuck felt a bubble of nerves rise. “Please,” he said before he could stop himself, “please don’t apologize for kissing me, whatever you do. Because even if you regret it, I really enjoyed it, so please let me have that.”

“Chuck, I wasn’t going to apologize for kissing you.” Sarah sounded half baffled and half amused. “I was going to apologize for running off like that.”

“Oh. You don’t have to apologize: you had to go to work. There’s really no reason to apologize for that, ever.” Now it wasn’t nerves but rather humiliation that made Chuck want to shrink inside his coat. Also, the cold. He may have spent years in Siberia, but that didn’t mean he actually liked the gorram cold. If what Beckman and Graham had said was true, they would be back in Burbank soon, and he couldn’t wait. 

“I felt bad. And you weren’t the only one who enjoyed it, for the record,” Sarah said.

Chuck flushed. “Oh.”

Sarah’s smile flashed for a brief second before she sobered again. She looked at him with the expression she only used when about to deliver big news. “But that’s kind of what we need to talk about.”

Chuck glanced behind him, where the entrance to Langley loomed over them. “Here?”

“No, not here.” Sarah turned, and Chuck could see the Crown Vic pull out of its spot across the parking lot and start rumbling toward them. “And not in front of Casey, either.”

“When we get back to the Davenports’?” Chuck asked.

“It’s a date,” Sarah said.

Chuck marveled that those words seemed to have an entirely different meaning than they had the night before. Still, all he said was, “Can’t wait.” He almost meant it.


	41. The Couch Most Ravenous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker. When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening, our spirits expand. – _Sue Patton Thoele_

**15 DECEMBER 2007**   
**DAVENPORT ESTATE**   
**14:18 EST**

As much as Chuck was dreading whatever Sarah wanted to talk about, it had to wait. Sarah had succumbed to exhaustion on the way back to the Davenports’ and fallen asleep in the backseat of the Crown Vic. She’d looked sheepish about it when Chuck had gently shaken her awake, but he’d told her to go take a nap, they could talk later. The look of gratitude had been worth it, but two hours later, he’d driven himself halfway to insane trying to figure out exactly what Sarah was going to say, and fretting over Bryce. He knew Bryce was staying in a hotel, and they would see him again Monday, but what happened then? What did going deep undercover entail? Would it mean late night meetings alone with Sarah to deliver information? And what the hell had happened between Bryce and Sarah, really?

Chuck planted himself at the dining room table with a magazine and hoped somebody would wander by in the mood to talk. All of the Davenports were home, as well as the Prometheus members, but everybody seemed to have scattered. Chuck nursed a Red Bull for nearly twenty minutes before he heard footsteps.

“Oh, hey! There you are!” Awesome approached from the garage. “Perfect, we need a fourth.”

Chuck looked up from the magazine. “A fourth what?”

“Teammate. B-Ball, dude.”

Chuck glanced at the sliding glass door. It hadn’t snowed in nearly a week, but the world just looked _frozen_. “Are you immune to cold or something? Is that your superpower?”

“Won’t be cold for long. C’mon, Chuckster. Get outside, play some ball. Get that blood pumping.”

Chuck sighed. He was still in slacks and the button-up shirt from his meeting with Graham and Beckman. And it was so freaking cold outside. “Yeah,” he said. “Give me five minutes.”

“Excellent.” Awesome held his hand up for a high-five. Chuck dutifully obliged him on the way up to his room.

He came down to find that he was no longer the fourth, but the sixth. In addition to Russ and Nate, Awesome had convinced Gwen and Ellie to join them at the blacktop half-court in the driveway. The teams were divided: Chuck was put with Awesome and Gwen.

He was a fair basketball player. Being in a frat and being tall meant that he’d been asked to play on intramural teams, which meant he’d had to learn not to trip over his own feet. He expected competition from Ellie, as she was ruthless when it came to sports, but he had not expected the Davenports. They fought dirty, all elbows, body-slams, and in one case, a knee dangerously close to an area of his body that Chuck quite valued. It made him grateful there were two doctors right on the court.

He caught a blow to the chin from Nate’s elbow when the two of them went for the rebound. When they landed, the ball safely tucked against Chuck, he mock-glared at the fourteen-year-old. “I’m so going to kick your ass at Halo later for that.”

Nate sneered back with the same good humor. “Like you could,” he said, and tried to steal the ball. Chuck whipped off a pass to Gwen, who sank a two-pointer, nothing but net.

“You just got schooled by your mother,” Chuck told him as they jogged back up to the top of the half-court to restart.

Nate muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath and raced off to guard the woman who had just effectively schooled him.

Chuck turned and almost tripped over Ellie. “How was your date?” she asked, smirking.

He tried to get around to block her, only for her to slam her shoulder into his sternum. “Ouch!”

“Oh, come on. That didn’t hurt.”

“Excuse me, it’s my chest you just tried to punch a hole through, I think I’m the one that gets to decide if it hurt or not.” Chuck tried to get around Ellie again. She blocked his way. He feinted left and jumped, launching into the air and snatching the ball Awesome had stolen from Russ and now hurtled his way. He landed, ducked left, and made a shot around Ellie. It bounced against the rim and Gwen elbowed her husband aside to grab the rebound. Chuck ran to get open, but shaking Ellie proved impossible, both physically and on the subject of the date.

“So?” she asked as Gwen tossed the ball to Awesome. “The date? It was good?”

Chuck thought about it a split-second too long, which made Ellie narrow her eyes. “Yes,” he said, speaking quickly to make up for the lapse. “Yeah, it was a great date.”

“Oh,” Ellie said, and surged forward, grabbing the pass intended for Chuck before he could. She broke away, did a textbook perfect layup, and grinned at him as she snatched the ball. “Where’d you two go?”

“Smithsonian.” Chuck caught the ball she tossed to him and dribbled experimentally a couple of times at the top of the court. He faked a pass to Gwen and instead threw the ball to Awesome.

Ellie stayed with him. “The _Smithsonian_? The Air and Space Museum?”

“Yeah, there.”

“Huh.” Ellie jumped in front of him, but wasn’t fast enough to snatch the pass before Chuck caught it. He backed up, dribbling again and looking for an opening, even while Ellie frowned. “I wouldn’t have expected that. And Sarah was fine with it?”

“Fine with it? It was her idea.” Chuck did a bounce pass around Ellie that got intercepted by Russ before it could get to Gwen.

“Damn, she must be smitten,” Ellie muttered, and Chuck nearly tripped over his own shoelaces. His sister, however, wasn’t done. “I didn’t hear her come in last night.”

Chuck’s mind went blank. They hadn’t come up with a cover story for Awesome and Ellie, and he didn’t want to tell his sister that the date had ended at gunpoint. “It was late. She’s really quiet, you know, almost like a mouse, really, and we both had to go in to the CIA for a little bit today, so she was probably just gone before you got up…”

“Uh-huh.” Ellie’s tone clearly stated that she didn’t quite believe him.

Great, Chuck thought as the members of the other team switched and he was now guarding Russ, Ellie thinks I got lucky last night. Sarah’s in for a surprise when she wakes up. Won’t that be fun?

**15 DECEMBER 2007**   
**DAVENPORT ESTATE**   
**16:28 EST**

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

Chuck looked up from his magazine he’d returned to after the ballgame, though he’d migrated from the dining room to the den. He would have taken it up to his guest room in the attic, but Sarah had an odd sense of propriety with all of these people around, and he figured she might not seek him out in his bedroom. He wanted to make himself available for when she did wake.

The problem was, he was a little underfoot. He hadn’t heard Gwen coming, but she padded into the room, cell phone attached to her ear. It sounded like work calling. He rose to leave and give her the room for some privacy, but she waved that he was fine where he was. With a shrug, he returned to the magazine.

“Of course, sir, first thing Monday morning. I’ll speak with Agent Scott on Monday and get the problem resolved. Mm-hmm. I understand, sir. Right away. Enjoy the rest of your golf game, sir.” Gwen hung the phone up, tossed it on the coffee table, and collapsed with a somewhat melodramatic groan onto the easy chair. “Bureaucratic prick.”

Chuck affected an innocent look. “Isn’t the FBI full of those?”

“That’s bureaucratic idiots, and watch it, buster.”

“My bad,” Chuck said, smirking at his magazine.

“You’re a smartass,” Gwen said.

Chuck pretended to look offended. Gwen rolled her eyes and stretched out, kicking her feet up onto the coffee table next to her cell phone. “Kid,” she said, as both Gwen and Russ called him that now, “don’t even run your own inter-agency department. It’s not worth the pain in the ass it causes.”

“Noted. Although I do know a thing or two about inter-agency relations.”

“Speaking of relations…” Gwen blew out a long breath and smirked again. “How was your date with Agent Walker?”

Chuck dropped the magazine.

“Come on, you think we didn’t know?” Again, Gwen rolled her eyes. “I lost twenty dollars betting on you against Russell.”

Chuck forced himself to calmly pick up the magazine and opened it to the page he had been reading. “What date?” he asked in an almost-normal voice. “I’m pretty sure the CIA prohibits dating between coworkers in the same department.”

“It doesn’t prohibit it. It discourages it,” Gwen said. When Chuck gave her a startled look, she waved her hand in a “What can you do?” motion. “I run an inter-agency taskforce of representatives that exists outside of the usual chain of command, Chuck. Trust me when I say that I’m a little more than familiar with the separate agency codes of conduct.”

“Oh,” Chuck said.

“Besides, I wasn’t asking as your rep. I think it’s cute.”

“Cute?”

“Sure. I may have lost twenty dollars and bragging rights, but I’m big enough to admit that. I heard your sister talking about it on the court today. You went to the Smithsonian?”

“Yeah, ah, Sarah had a friend who was willing to let us wander around for awhile after closing.” Chuck closed the magazine and set it to the side. “You’re not going to put that in your reports?”

“A social outing between friends? I don’t see why I would.”

Chuck let out a deep breath.

“I’m not out to get you, Chuck. I’m on your side.”

“As much as the law will allow you to be,” Chuck pointed out before his brain could stop him.

Gwen laughed. “That’s why I went to law school, Chuck. Law can be interpreted in so many ways. And it’s my job to make sure that, as long as you’re a law-abiding citizen, the law stays on your side.”

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t knock over any liquor stores.”

“They’re more hassle than they’re worth,” Gwen agreed.

Chuck squinted. “Are you speaking from experience?”

“I have friends that are public defenders.”

“Oh.”

So,” Gwen said. “How _did_ the social outing between friends go, anyway?”

**15 DECEMBER 2007**   
**DAVENPORT ESTATE**   
**17:02 EST**

“Sarah’s been sleeping awhile,” Ellie said on the way to the fridge. Chuck had returned to the dining room, which, as dinnertime approached, had become a hub of activity. Casey, Sarah, Chuck, and the Davenports would have to fend for themselves since Ellie and Awesome were headed into DC for a night on the town with two vetted agents following them around at a discrete distance. Even without his issues with people and space, Chuck would have preferred to stay home.

“Okay,” Chuck said without looking up from his laptop screen.

Ellie grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. “If you let her sleep any longer, she won’t sleep tonight.”

Chuck mock-scowled at his sister. “Do you boss everybody around or were we just born special?”

Ellie stuck her tongue out at him.

“Guess I’ll go wake her up. Enjoy your date with Awesome.”

“Devon,” Ellie corrected.

Chuck stuck his tongue out at her right back, closed the lid to his laptop, and headed through the sliding glass door. Very quickly, he regretted not grabbing his jacket for even the short trip across the lawn. He might have tolerated the cold during the game earlier, but with full dark approaching, he shivered. It didn’t help that he paused at the door of the guest house for nearly a full minute before going inside. No matter how much he was dying to know what Sarah wanted to talk about, the words “We need to talk” were never comforting words to hear from any woman, at all.

He had no idea where Sarah’s room was, as he hadn’t explored beyond the kitchen/dining room/living room. They hadn’t spent much time in the guest house. He’d gone swimming in the pool once and Ellie had cooked dinner for the Prometheus team one night, but Chuck hadn’t even thought to wonder where Sarah’s bedroom was, or what it looked like.

And to be honest with himself, in the fantasies that had become more and more prevalent over the past couple of weeks, they hadn’t exactly been in bed. His libido didn’t appear to be as traditional as the rest of him.

He needn’t have worried. Sarah was asleep on the couch in the living room right beyond the front door, stretched out under a blanket and dead to the world. She didn’t even stir when Chuck let the door close a little too loudly behind him in his surprise. She lay on her back, her head turned toward him. She always looked so different in sleep. Something, Chuck figured, to do with her eyes. They tended to dominate her face, unsurprising given just how much emotion she could portray with a single look. With her eyes closed, her face relaxed, one hand lightly fisted around the edge of the blanket, she looked younger. Not necessarily vulnerable, but maybe more approachable, even if the reserve never faded.

Also, tired. Even in sleep, she looked exhausted. Perhaps he should let her sleep, Ellie’s advice be damned. But Ellie had a point, and he was going nuts from wondering exactly what Sarah wanted to talk about, so he leaned over and touched her shoulder to—

Sarah flared to life. In the blink of an eye, she went from lying down to a blur of motion. Chuck didn’t have time to yelp before Sarah’s hand clamped down on his wrist and twisted. He went forward, his face smashing into back of the couch. Sarah pinioned his arm behind his back, her knee digging into the small of his back.

“Uncle! Uncle!” His words were muffled by the couch.

Because she was on top of him, he _felt_ Sarah’s jolt of surprise. She released his arm and wrist as if he’d scorched her. “Oh, my God! Sorry! Sorry—I am so, so—are you okay?”

With some difficulty, Chuck levered himself up. She’d put him in an arm lock that was as scary as it was impressive, and even more painful than that. “The couch,” he said conversationally, “was trying to eat you. But that’s okay. I stopped it with my face.”

Sarah looked like she might have actually preferred the couch swallow her whole. “I am so, so sorry about that. I didn’t—I wouldn’t—I mean, it was a reflex and I don’t know my own strength and—”

Chuck held up a hand. His shoulder was practically on fire and he realized that he was still perched on one knee on the couch, Sarah very close behind him. Abruptly, he shifted so that he was sitting. “It’s okay,” he said, hiding his wince. “My fault. There are downsides to dating a ninja.”

“Dating a…” The situation seemed to catch up to Sarah. She blinked at him. “What are you doing here?’

“Figured if I let you sleep any longer, you wouldn’t sleep tonight.”

Sarah pushed a hand through her hair. It was a bit mussed from sleep. “What time is it?”

Chuck showed her his watch.

“Oh.” Sarah’s brows knit together as she stared at the watch face. She gingerly took a seat next to Chuck on the couch. Chuck figured the adrenaline rush must have made him blind because he only just now noticed Sarah was once again wearing very short shorts. He pried his eyes away. “Wow. I didn’t mean to sleep that long.”

Chuck picked up her pillow with one hand. It smelled like her shampoo. He put it down very quickly. “Why’re you on the couch and not in your room?”

Sarah yawned. “What room?”

“What r—do you mean you’ve been sleeping on the couch this whole time we’ve been in DC?”

“It’s a comfortable couch.”

Chuck gaped at her. “Why didn’t you _say_ anything? I would have given up my room in a heartbeat, there’s no reason for you to be sleeping on the couch!”

“Oh, yes,” Sarah said, only mildly sarcastic, “let’s leave the three agents unable to protect themselves together away from the main house. Seriously, Chuck, it’s okay.”

“Why doesn’t Casey take the couch?” 

“Because Ellie’s more comfortable around me.”

“Oh.”

Sarah’s eyes took on a wicked gleam of fun that mixed in with the sleepiness still on her face and made it a little hard to breathe. “And if I were sleeping in the main house near you, I have no idea what would stop me from just sneaking down the hall some night and…”

She let the sentence trail off. Chuck felt his ears burning, which only made her laugh.

“Which is,” Sarah said once she’d stopped chuckling, “why you’re here, I suppose.”

Chuck gave Sarah a baffled look. “For sex?”

This time it was her turn to choke.

“I mean, I came here to see if you were up to talking, and geez, that makes it sound like we’re going to play cops and robbers and—” Chuck stopped mid-sentence when he saw Sarah fighting back a laugh. “That’s a roleplay, isn’t it? Cops and robbers. And oh God, our conversations have now officially become like walking through a field of sexual landmines.”

“To be fair, I don’t think that’s exactly new,” Sarah pointed out. “And it’s something we need to talk about, yes.”

“Do you want a beer? I want a beer.”

Sarah grinned when Chuck pushed himself away from the couch. “Does having a conversation with me require alcohol?” she called.

Chuck bit back a reply that it had more to do with the length of her shorts and the fact that she was sleep-rumpled. “Regular or light beer?” he called back, eying the selection in the fridge.

“Light. Dinner last night was a little heavy on the carbs.” Sarah rose and stretched, and Chuck forgot all about his mission to fetch libations. A couple of seconds later, he jumped and focused his attention on the fridge again. He pulled out the beers and, seeing a block of cheese next to the butter, changed his mind and grabbed those, too. He began rifling for pans as Sarah wandered into the kitchen. “What’cha doing?”

“Making grilled cheese,” Chuck said.

One of Sarah’s eyebrows went up. “Because?”

“It’s dinner time.”

“You’re going to cook?”

Chuck pulled out a bottle opener, popped the tops of the beers, and slid one to Sarah. “Why not? Grilled cheese isn’t hard, and it’s easy to peel the burned parts off.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.”

“Want anything on your sandwich besides cheese?”

“I think I saw some tomatoes in here,” Sarah said, crossing to the fridge. She pulled one out, then began to rummage for a cutting board and a knife.

Chuck watched her for a moment. He prided himself that he didn’t stare at her legs. Mostly. “I don’t know how I feel about this whole ‘making grilled cheese healthier’ thing you’re doing.”

“It’ll be delicious, I promise.”

“Okay.”

“So we need to talk.” Sarah made the first slice in the tomato rather expertly, and Chuck didn’t miss the deep breath she took. “Do you want to keep going?”

Chuck blinked at her. “Making the grilled cheese?”

“No. I mean dating me.”

Now Chuck did more than blink at her. He outright gaped. “You’re joking, right? Of course I want to!”

Sarah looked a bit pink. “Okay, that’s good.”

“Why? Don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.” Sarah kept her gaze focused on the tomato. “But it does mean problems. We can’t let Gwen know.”

“Um, what if she already does?”

“What?”

“She asked me how our date went. For the record, I tried to pretend like I didn’t know what she was talking about.” Chuck turned on the burner. “And also for the record, it’s not prohibited in the CIA to date your coworker. Just discouraged.”

“Oh.” Sarah’s mouth worked a couple of times.

“She’s on our side. She’s not going to tell Graham and Beckman.”

“You’re sure?”

“Not as sure as I am that dividing by zero is a bad thing, but reasonably so.” Chuck began to slice the cheese, concentrating so that he didn’t chop off the tip of his thumb. “Which, I’m guessing, not telling Graham and Beckman is one of the things you want to talk about.”

Sarah confirmed his theory by wincing. “It would be bad.”

Chuck stopped slicing. “Bad enough to lose your career over bad?”

“Not quite that bad, no. But I would get a nice black mark added to my file.”

Chuck frowned. He really didn’t like the sound of that. “And you still want to do this?”

“You’re important enough to risk a black mark on my file for any day.”

“You really do say the sweetest things.”

Sarah flicked a bit of tomato at him. Chuck grinned. “The bosses control everything else I do,” he said as he stacked bread on the counter, his face sobering. “They don’t need to know my—our love life, too. I’m okay with that. But what about Casey?”

“We could buy him a box of Cubans?” 

“Really? You’re going to bribe an officer of the United States Marine Corps? Shame, Sarah Walker, shame.” Chuck paused. “How big of a box are we talking here?”

“He might see us kissing one day,” Sarah said.

Chuck hoped his flush wasn’t too obvious. “Check to see if Costco sells Cuban cigars in bulk, got it.”

“Apparently he might see us kissing a lot?”

Chuck held up a hand. “For the record, I would not protest that.”

“Casey might.”

“What’s he whining about? He’s got Cubans.”

“Bold words for the man who was having a hard time looking at my legs just a few minutes ago.”

Chuck flinched. “You noticed?”

“I notice everything you do.”

Chuck’s eyes cut up from the sandwich. Surely, he had misheard that. But Sarah was just watching him calmly. “Oh,” Chuck said. He hid a wince. “You haven’t caught me picking my nose or anything have you?”

Sarah smiled, but she sobered quickly. “I think we need to take things slowly,” she said. “Jokes about Cubans and my legs aside…I really want this to work.”

“Yeah?” Chuck forced himself to ignore the nerves currently making his stomach twitch. “What happened to ‘Just say the word, Chuck?’”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Of course, the one time I wasn’t remotely serious you would pick up on things. Your timing, as ever, is exquisite.”

“It really is, isn’t it?” Chuck poked the sandwich, not sure if he wanted to laugh or frown at that. 

“I really like you, Chuck.” When he opened his mouth to ask her why for what felt like the twelfth time, she held up a finger. “You may not understand it, but maybe you should accept it. It would make things easier.”

“Women are confusing,” Chuck told her.

“It’s our prerogative.”

Chuck checked the bottom of the sandwich. The outer layer was golden with melted butter, not yet brown. And even better, not yet black. “I like you, too,” he said. “It would be nice if this worked.”

Sarah’s smile, the one that outshone any other lights in the room, nearly dazzled him. “A ringing endorsement,” she teased. “So, we’ll take it slow?”

“I don’t think you have much of a choice with me. My brain periodically needs a reboot after you smile at me—kind of like you’re doing right now. I can’t even imagine what’ll happen if we add…other things to the mix.”

Sarah made what looked like a brave attempt to hide her smile behind her hand. “We’ll build up to that,” she promised. 

“And you’re okay with doing that? With, ah, waiting for me to catch up?”

“Chuck, it’s not a race.”

Chuck, about to flip the sandwich over, stilled. “You’ve told me that before,” he said.

He saw Sarah frown as she puzzled it over. “Have I?”

“Back in the bunker, when you were leaving. You followed it up with something about stopping to enjoy the journey.” The words had stuck with him over the following two years, every time he had wondered what Bryce and Sarah were up to. He hadn’t thought about the advice since the bunker, though. Possibly because he hadn’t had _time_ to stop and enjoy any journey.

Sarah took a sip of her beer. “Apparently, I gave good advice back then.”

“You still do,” Chuck said. He picked up his beer. “To enjoying the journey together?”

Sarah clinked her bottle against his. “You’re burning the sandwich,” she told him.

Chuck swore and hastily flipped the grilled cheese in the pan. The edges looked a bit crispy. “I’ll, ah, take this one and you can have the one I don’t burn.”

“It’s fine,” Sarah said. She rose and moved around Chuck, her shoulder brushing his back—was that intentional?—on her way to the cabinet, where she took down a box of Wheat Thins and a bowl. As she poured, she said, “There’s something else.”

“Bryce.”

“Yes.” He heard her take a deep breath. “We need to talk about him.”

“The one hundred seventy five pound gorilla in the room,” Chuck said. “Not that I’m calling Bryce a monkey, but…”

“I get it.” Sarah set the bowl of Wheat Thins on the top of the island between her and Chuck and took her seat at the stool. “Bryce and I…it was complicated.”

“Oh, there’s a fun word,” Chuck said, feeling his stomach twist. He had always hated that phrase: it explained nothing and everything at the same time, and usually left everybody more confused. Even though he was dying of curiosity, he coughed a little. He had to at least make the effort to be fair. “It’s not any of my business if…”

“No,” Sarah said, and took a deep breath. “No, you’ll drive yourself crazy over this Bryce thing and you deserve to know.”

Chuck wondered if it would be off-putting to chug the rest of his beer. He decided maybe it was a bad idea.

“Bryce and I, we were together. For a little while.” Sarah couldn’t seem to look at him now. She rolled her beer bottle around on its edges, guiding it along with her thumbs. “It ended almost two years ago, and for a while, it was kind of a disaster. Bryce went on to work solo, I got loaned to the DEA and worked with Carina. It wasn’t serious, but…”

“But it happened?” Chuck asked.

“Yes. And I can’t take it back that it happened. I know he’s a friend of yours, and so this is probably a little weird.”

“Sarah, the guy blew up half of the DNI and made me a human Intersect. Then he let us think he was rogue for over a month. A little weird doesn’t begin to cover it.” 

He could feel Sarah’s eyes on him, watching him closely. “That is true,” was all she said.

Chuck put all of his attention into flipping the sandwich onto a plate. Twin feelings of elation and dread filled him as he added more butter and started the second sandwich. Though he wanted to cheer that it hadn’t been serious between Bryce and Sarah, the rest of him didn’t like hearing about it. It was selfish on his part, he knew, and foolish. Bryce had dated some pretty amazing women at Stanford, a relationship between him and Sarah made a lot of sense. It made a hell of a lot more sense than Sarah wanting to be with _him_ , Chuck Bartowski.

“If it’s not weird for you to work with Bryce, I’ll try not to let it be weird for me,” he said, and hoped it wasn’t a lie.

Sarah let out a relieved breath. “Good. I don’t want to come between your friendship.”

“I think all of the aforementioned blowing things up already did that. But I do have to wonder: if it was kind of a disaster with Bryce,” he said, “what do you think working together after this thing goes south will be like?”

Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know.”

He could appreciate the honesty, even though it did nothing to ease the knots in his stomach. “That’s it?” he asked.

“Let’s not let it go south,” Sarah said.

“And we can prevent that, how?”

“You know, I enjoy being the optimist in the relationship,” Sarah said. “It’s a switch. Plus, it means I can do things like this.” She rose and crossed around to Chuck’s side of the island, while he watched her. He stayed stock still as she rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek.

“That’s it?” he asked again, raising an eyebrow at Sarah.

One of her eyebrows rose. “Didn’t we just say we needed to go slow?”

“Yeah, but you could take pity on me.” Chuck put his hand on his shoulder and mock-grimaced. “A ninja tried to dislocate my shoulder today.”

“Well, since your face did save me from a ravenous couch…” This time, when Sarah stood on her tiptoes, she didn’t kiss his cheek. And unlike the night before, Chuck kissed her back.

“So,” he asked when she broke the kiss and his brain had caught up with the rest of him. “What do we do now?”

“You finish the burning that sandwich and we go watch TV. And if you’re nice to me, I’ll let you put your arm around me.” Sarah grabbed the first sandwich, the bowl of Wheat Thins, and her beer, and headed toward the living room. 

**15 DECEMBER 2007**   
**THE DAVE CAVE**   
**09:23 EST**

“Well, well, well, look who finally rears his ugly head. I realize you’ve got a hot handler-slash-partner, Agent Bartowski, but you do know the Monday morning walk of shame still means coming in on time.” Digital Dave swung around in his chair to grin at Chuck.

Chuck grinned just as sarcastically back and dropped a bag with two Danishes down beside his coworker. “I was in a meeting, jerk.”

“Ah. Meetings. The number one killer of productivity in the CIA, apart from Democrats.”

“Does that mean you’re Republican, Dave?” Chuck set his messenger bag down by his chair and began booting up his computers.

“Me? Hell no. But you’ve got to admit, Republicans sure are fond of shooting things, which means they automatically support the CIA, right?”

Chuck thought of Casey. “I wouldn’t say that’s always the case.”

Dave pulled out the first Danish. “Cherry! Sweet!” 

Chuck had to laugh even as he swung around to make sure all of his hard drives were on. The briefing with Beckman and Graham had included the entire Prometheus team, even Ellie and Awesome, which had been an interesting dynamic. Permanent cover and NSA identities had been issued for both of them for use in any reports. Chuck figured Ellie wasn’t sure how she felt about the name Adele Beckett, but Awesome of course loved the name Bryan McGee. Chuck had a feeling that Awesome would have loved any name picked out for him, though.

The briefing had also included Bryce. Even after his talk with Sarah, Chuck had been uneasy about how things stood with Bryce, but worry had been pointless. The other CIA agent had been all business and congeniality during the briefing. He’d been polite to Ellie, excited to meet Awesome, and professional with Chuck, Sarah, and Casey. Chuck supposed it was only to be expected.

“You get any of that code looked at this weekend?” Dave asked through a mouthful of Danish.

Chuck swiveled around in his chair. “Ah…”

“I’m going to take that as a no.”

“Well, yeah. It’s a no.”

“It’s okay.” Dave glanced through the large window that overlooked the tech lab, where Sarah could be seen chatting with one of the techs she had befriended—possibly out of boredom—over the past couple of weeks. “I understand.”

Chuck forced a laugh. “I didn’t spend all weekend with Sarah, you know.”

“Every time you say something like that, you prove my theory that you’re completely insane right. You know that, don’t you?”

“Shut up.” Chuck laughed and turned back to his desk, logging onto the server so that he could check his email. “I played video games.”

“Video games.”

“And watched TV.”

“I don’t understand.”

“TV is this thing where you take real live actors, or cartoons, if you prefer, and they tell a story on a box usually in your living room that’s not a computer and—”

Dave crumpled up the Danish bag and threw it at him. Chuck deflected the paper missile with a fist and laughed.

“You, my friend, are lucky you’re so good at your job, otherwise I would have to take offense to your condescending and totally wrong explanations.” Dave stabbed an accusing finger at him, though he was grinning. “And good thing one of us here did because guess who finished out the Fulcruminator code?”

Chuck abruptly stopped idly moving his chair from left to right. “You did?” he asked. “For reals?”

“For reals.”

“Let me see!” In a flash, Chuck was across the lab, reading over Dave’s shoulder. He practically devoured the code with his eyes, his brain both marveling and searching for any errors. After a moment, he leaned back and let out a low whistle. “That’s beautiful. I don’t think I’ve seen anything more beautiful than that.”

“It is probably the sexiest piece of code I’ve ever written,” Dave agreed. “I tested it every way I could think of, and good news, Bartowski, this baby’s ready to go.”

“Yeah?”

Dave picked up a wallet from amid the carnage atop his desk. “Put it into every type of swipe card the CIA can produce, as well as this,” and he held up a flash drive, “and this.” He added a simple DVD-R to the pile. “She’s field ready.”

Chuck felt a spurt of pure inventor’s glee. “Should we—should we pop some champagne or something?” he asked.

“I think Damon keeps a bottle of the cheap stuff in the—hold on a second.” Dave picked up his buzzing cell phone. “O’Connor.”

Dave’s last name was O’Connor?

“Got it, sir. Of course. No, not a problem, the device is ready for use.” After making a couple of “mm-hmm” noises, Dave hung up the phone and raised his eyebrows at Chuck. “Want to see something neat about the Dave Cave?”

Did it come with an ability to magically clean itself, Chuck wondered. But he just said, “Sure.”

“Wave to all of the techs now, they’re about to not see us.”

That didn’t sound good to Chuck. He eyed Dave warily. “Excuse me?”

Dave flipped up a pile of cables. Chuck had thought they were just lying on the desk, part of the regular mess, but they turned out to be the lid for a panel containing some ominous-looking red buttons. As Chuck’s eyebrows rose, Dave pressed two of the buttons in quick order, waited a second, and then tapped a third.

The glass on the window overlooking the tech department changed subtly. It was as though the lighting in the room altered its color.

“Nifty, right? Instant two-way mirror.” Dave put the panel back, seemingly careful not to disrupt any of the dust buildup around it, and crossed to the other side of the room. “When I first started here, I was a little disappointed. I mean, working at the CIA and there wasn’t any of that secrecy stuff? Where’s all the cloak, and where the hell is the dagger?”

Chuck, who had perhaps seen more than enough dagger to last him a lifetime and not enough cloak, just said, “Uh-huh.”

“And then when I got promoted, they showed me this.” Dave moved aside what had appeared to Chuck to be a towering monolith of ancient, dusty computers. And there, Chuck saw, plain as day, sitting in the middle of the floor was a trapdoor.

He got a brief flash of killer robo-rabbits coming after him when he blinked, but he managed to hold it together.

“Cool, right?” Dave asked. “It’s how they smuggle in the deep undercover agents. You know, when they visit Langley and need tech upgrades or something.”

Chuck wanted to ask how many actual deep undercover agents visited Langley, as that seemed rather counterproductive to him, but the trapdoor opened before he could. Bryce Larkin climbed through, looking casual in the blue sweater and slacks he’d worn to the briefing that morning. “Dave, hey!” he said, giving the other man a firm handshake. “Been awhile.”

Dave returned the handshake. “God, am I glad you weren’t actually rogue, I would never have lived it down. You were on one of my teams. I’m still getting crap for it in the break room.”

“Yeah, sorry about that, man.” Bryce turned the megawatt grin toward Chuck. “You’ve been assimilated?”

“For a couple of weeks now.” And what the hell reason did he have to be nervous around Bryce? Sarah had said the relationship with Bryce hadn’t been serious. Chuck kept his stance relaxed so that Bryce couldn’t read his body language. “Dave’s trying to make it permanent.”

“We’re understaffed, and you’re a rock-star,” Dave said, rehashing an old argument. “Just say the word and I will sign any and every contract I can in blood to get you stationed here.”

Chuck jolted. Neither Bryce nor Dave seemed to notice.

“I believe it,” Bryce said, grinning over at his one-time best friend. He abruptly shifted his stance; it was time to get down to business. “The bosses sent me over here to pick up some gear that will help on my mission?”

“Ah yes. No thanks to Agent Slacker over here.” Dave jerked his thumb at Chuck.

“Oh, right, because I didn’t detect and break the original code at all,” he said, sarcasm dripping. He forgot some of the awkwardness around Bryce in his excitement. “Seriously, come check this out. We hacked the primary Fulcrum security algorithm. The coding is a thing of genius.”

“Genius,” Dave echoed, letting Chuck lead them over to the monitor. He pulled up the code and stepped back to let Bryce get a look at it.

Instead of geeking out, as he would have in college, Bryce just stood with his hands in his pockets. “I’m so out of touch with that stuff, man. I don’t know if I’d be properly impressed because I’ve forgotten so much about it, but I’m sure it’s great.”

Chuck tried to hide his disappointment. Things might have been strained with Bryce around now, but one of his favorite parts about Stanford had been showing Bryce coding and bouncing ideas off of him.

Thankfully, Dave took over the show. “Okay. Well, even so, it’s an impressive bit of work. Here, this is for you.”

Bryce unzipped the wallet. “Scan cards, nice! What are they for?”

“Any and every type of security scanner Fulcrum can throw at us, minus optical and fingerprint, and I’m sure you can work your way around that.” Dave began assembling random things on the desk. “Just give me a second to get the software side of things together for you, and you’ll be all set.”

“Cool. Thanks, Dave.”

“No problem.”

While Dave puttered around, gathering random objects from around his worktable, Chuck headed to his desk. He was surprised when Bryce followed him, as the other man hadn’t seemed particularly interested in striking up a conversation with him at the meeting. “You having a good time in DC?” Bryce asked, leaning against Chuck’s desk almost exactly like Sarah always did.

They were going to chitchat now? Chuck nearly raised an eyebrow at that. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “It’s not my town, but it’s not bad.”

“Excellent.”

Now what, Chuck wanted to ask him? There were questions: why did Bryce trust him and nobody else in the agencies? What had changed his mind? Why had he come back _now_ , or more specifically, why had he followed Chuck and Sarah around on their date? And most importantly, with everything that had happened since September between them, why the hell were they now two seconds away from talking about the weather?

“Got a present for you,” Bryce went on.

To his credit, Chuck didn’t point out that the last time Bryce had given him anything, Chuck had spent a sleepless week on the run across Russia, Eastern Europe, and Greece from both terrorists and good guys alike. He swung around in his desk chair and asked, “Oh yeah?”

“Beckman asked me to drop this off. Said you requested it.” Bryce dropped a thick manila folder on Chuck’s desk.

Though he was now brimming with curiosity, Chuck didn’t move to grab the file. “Why’d you take the disk?” he asked.

“What?”

“At Stanford. You took the disk and brought back what I presume is an altered version of the original. We didn’t get a chance to ask Fleming about it before he passed.” Chuck didn’t think about that—couldn’t think about that. He would forever hate Fleming for being a part of what had led to Chuck spending five years in a bunker, and it felt wrong to loathe a dead man. “So I’m going to guess, in the nature of true spy work, it’s ninety percent truth and ten percent lie. Why did you remove my profile and yours from that disk, Bryce?”

Bryce shrugged. His face never flickered or changed or gave away any other signs of lying. He continued to look completely genial. “I didn’t want the Agency having that profile.”

“Didn’t they have it already?”

“No. Fleming keeps—kept those interviews for his own records.” Bryce glanced around the Dave Cave, and Chuck got the feeling he was seeing something else besides a messy computer lab. “The less these people have on you, the better you are in the long run.” 

“Why’d you take my profile off, too?”

“I was doing you a favor, buddy.”

Chuck’s mouth acted before the rest of him. “I would appreciate it if you stopped doing me favors.”

Now Bryce’s face wavered, a quick grimace, but he said, “That’s fair. Okay. Sorry.”

It was as much of an apology as he was going to get. Silence fell over them, so awkward and stiff that Chuck nearly just turned to his computer and started typing, anything to break the tension. He cast about for a subject that they could discuss in front of Dave. The other man might have suppressed the fact that Bryce had emailed Chuck on the night the Intersect had been destroyed, but he had been adamant ever since that he wanted nothing to do with whatever had been in the email.

“So, uh, how’s your sister?” Chuck finally asked.

“Dunno. I cut all ties in September.”

When he’d blown up the Intersect, Chuck thought. He paused as the implications truly settled in. Bryce had sabotaged his career, betrayed his partner, estranged his best friend, cut ties with his friends and family. He had not only blown up the Intersect, it was like he’d blown up his whole life, too. In that moment, Chuck saw Bryce for what he must be: lonely.

“Oh,” he said. “Right.”

“How are things with you?” Bryce asked, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“They’re okay,” Chuck said, not really sure what Bryce wanted him to say.

“Casey treating you all right?”

Chuck thought of the three-hour _Modern Warfare_ marathon he had had with Casey and Nate Davenport the day before. “He hasn’t threatened to shove his foot up my ass this week.”

“Always a good thing.”

Dave appeared, and Chuck nearly let out a long breath in relief. “Your computer and software kit, sir,” Dave said, handing a nondescript laptop bag to Bryce. “That should contain everything you need.”

“Thanks, Dave. Really.” Bryce shook the computer tech’s hand. “Guess I’d better go and let you get out of stealth mode.”

“Much appreciated.” Dave glanced at Chuck and headed back to his own side of the Cave.

“Well, this is my cue,” Bryce said.

Chuck rose to his feet and held out his hand. “Try to stay out of trouble?”

“And ignore what I’m best at? Ha. Take care of yourself, Chuck.” 

Bryce shook his hand, but thankfully didn’t resort to the Klingon. It would have been pointless; Dave understood Klingon better than either of them. Bryce crossed back to the trapdoor. Before he climbed through, though, he cast one look over his shoulder, past Chuck to the window overlooking the entire Den beyond the Cave. Chuck saw a fleeting look cross Bryce’s face, and then the man dropped into the trapdoor, vanishing from sight. It took Chuck a moment to realize what the look had been: regret.

He glanced over his shoulder to see what Bryce had been looking at, though some part of him already knew. Indeed, Sarah stood at the coffeemaker outside, topping off her mug.

He didn’t get to assess how he felt about that, though, for the instant Dave hit the buttons to bring the Cave out of stealth mode, the door opened to admit Casey. “Pack your bags, Bartowski. Bosses have cleared us to go back to L.A.”


	42. California Dreaming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it. — _Charles F. Kettering_

**3 JANUARY 2008**   
**BURBANK BUY MORE**   
**18:02 PST**

“Oh, good, you got my text,” Morgan said before Chuck had even cleared the double doors into the Buy More. “Walk with me.”

Chuck blinked at him. He’d come straight from a day at the office—their first day back at the office in 2008, since Operation Prometheus was a government-run project and that thankfully meant holidays. It had been a long day of flashing and amassing intel; Casey had single-handedly taken down two suspected terrorists flying through LAX, and Sarah had led a team against a ship captain trafficking cocaine into L.A. through the Port of Los Angeles. Since both agents were still on their errands, Chuck was technically under orders to go straight to the Bachelor Pad, but he figured he couldn’t get into too much trouble at the Buy More.

He figured wrong. Morgan had something cooking, if the agitated body language was anything to go by.

“Uh, okay,” he said, falling into step beside his best friend. “What’s up?”

They passed a green-shirt standing sentry over the hallway back to the break room. He exchanged nods with Morgan, and Chuck began to feel a little creeped out. “Buddy? Is something happening?”

“Happening? No. It happened, Chuck, and I am so, so sorry.”

“Sorry for what, exactly?”

“For this, Chuck. For this,” Morgan said, and pushed open the break room door.

Chuck peered around his friend with some trepidation, but nothing in the break room seemed worthy of an apology. “Uh, I don’t get it.”

“The Wall of Chuck, man! The Wall of Chuck!” Morgan pushed both hands through his hair and yanked so that his skin distended over his forehead in strange patterns. “Harry Tang’s tyranny must be stopped!”

Chuck very carefully kept from showing any relief on his face as he took in the newly-blank wall at the back of the break room. It looked like the Wall of Chuck had been around long enough that he could see outlines—and in one case, a very clear outline of what had to have been the full-sized cardboard cutout of him in the green-shirt. “You don’t need the Wall of, uh, Chuck anymore, Morgan,” he pointed out in what he hoped was a very sensible voice. “You’ve got the real thing. Standing right here, even.”

“Yeah, but you went away for nearly three weeks! I didn’t know if you were coming back!”

Once again, Chuck had to keep his face very controlled. If Morgan knew just how close he had come to losing his best friend a second time, and this time permanently, there would be no end to the Wall of Chuck. It would possibly even grow.

It was simply better not to mention that.

“That’s not the point, man,” Morgan said.

“Er, then what is?”

“Harry Tang is a dictator and must be stopped! That’s the point! God!” Morgan threw his hands into the air in frustration. “It’s gone on too long!”

“You could just find another job,” Chuck pointed out.

Immediately, Morgan swiveled on the spot. “Can I come work for you?”

Chuck winced. His official office, upon returning to Burbank, had been moved downstairs into Castle itself, though they kept the façade of a company upstairs. It was partly to make it easier for him to flash, as Sarah’s old downstairs office was better equipped for that with the high-resolution monitors covering nearly an entire wall, and partially for his own protection. But even if there weren’t a government base buried below the offices of Pacific Securities, LLC, Chuck imagined that Morgan wouldn’t make a good fit working there. Casey would probably strangle him before the first coffee break.

“I’m sorry,” he said, genuinely apologetic. “I’m barely making enough to pay Casey, let alone Sarah.”

“Even with that huge business trip you just went on?”

“That huge business is the reason I’m making enough to afford Casey and Sarah,” Chuck lied. They had told Morgan that Ellie and Awesome had gone to visit the Senior Awesomes, and Chuck, Sarah, and Casey had gone along to work in the same area for a prestigious client. The story had so many holes in it that Chuck was sure nobody would believe it, but Morgan had bought it hook, line, and sinker.

“Oh.” Morgan sighed. “Too bad I burned all of my credit with Underpants, Etc. They might have hired me again.”

“Morgan, the last time you tried to work there, you put boxers on the heads of all of the mannequins and you thought an outfit from ‘Risky Business’ was good work attire.”

“Their company name is Underpants, Etc!”

Chuck hesitated. It was a valid point. “Maybe look somewhere else?” he offered.

“Yeah.” Morgan seemed glum about his prospects, and Chuck didn’t blame him. Even though the other man had been with the Buy More for years, there was very little chance of getting a positive reference from Tang the Tyrant. 

Chuck clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll help you out.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Let’s go pick up a pizza or something, and you can come back to the Bachelor Pad. We can work on your résumé.”

“Awesome. Halo tournament after?”

“Don’t push your luck,” Chuck said, even though he knew it would come to that. They headed back out to the main part of the store. 

“At least I’ve still got my deejay gig to keep me afloat,” Morgan said as they headed outside and toward Chuck’s car. 

“It keeps you in grape soda and out of restraining orders?”

“More than that, my friend. Ellie’s not my only client.” Morgan pulled out his old Boba Fett wallet and carefully worked the Velcro free. After a moment of rifling through the stacks of membership cards, he produced a black business card with raised silver lettering. “Check it out. A friend of mine let me take the turntable down at Club Skiddz while you were gone, and somebody was so impressed he asked for my card. And I got a call a few days ago, asking if I’d deejay one of his events.”

“Awesome!” Chuck turned the card over and frowned at the logo. “Uh, Morgan, you working for Hugh Hefner or something?”

“The Heff? No. Does that really look that much like the Playboy Bunny?” Morgan craned his neck to get a good look at the business card in Chuck’s hand. “I think it’s just a rabbit, dude. You really need to work on recognizing your branding.”

Chuck didn’t point out that he had spent five years away from society because it was Morgan, though he wanted to. Instead, he handed the card back to Morgan and made a “Hmm” noise in the back of his throat. It was another Sarah action, and he recognized it as such. Either she was picking up his mannerisms, or he was picking up hers, but it was a little strange to think about, given that they had only been dating, officially, for a couple of weeks.

Of course, they had been working together and spending quite a lot of time together before that, so it really wasn’t all that strange.

“The gig’s in a couple of weeks, man, you should come. I can get you in on the guest list.” Morgan waggled his eyebrows. “You can bring your hot secretary.”

“You mean my girlfriend?” Chuck asked, and had the pleasure of seeing Morgan’s jaw drop. “And it’s office manager, by the way.”

“Wait a second, you’re doing your secretary? Isn’t that a little cliché?”

“One, it’s office manager,” Chuck said through his teeth. “Two, don’t talk about her that way, and three, I don’t think it’s cliché.”

Morgan was quiet for a moment as they finished walking out to Chuck’s car. “I guess it wouldn’t be cliché, not when she looks like—hey! Ow! What’s with the hitting?”

Another one of Sarah’s mannerisms he’d picked up, Chuck figured, but he still glared at his friend. “Did the part where I said girlfriend not get through?” 

“Oh, right,” Morgan said. “I guess that makes sense. Well, either way, congratulations. But don’t hit me again. You know how easily I bruise, man.”

“I know, Morgan. I know. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” Chuck said, and climbed into the driver’s seat.

**3 JANUARY 2008**   
**BACHELOR PAD**   
**21:37 PST**

Chuck looked away from the TV when the front door of the Bachelor Pad opened, though Morgan kept his attention rapt on the screen. Morgan would watch his back in the game, Chuck knew. Still, his eyebrows lowered in confusion when it was Sarah that let herself into the Pad, not Casey.

“Ellie and Awesome wanted the apartment to themselves for awhile, so I cleared out,” she said, easily reading his mind like she always did these days. She dropped next to Chuck on the couch and leaned around him to get a look at Morgan. “Hey, Morgan.”

“Sarah, hey.” Morgan flicked a glance at her and then at Chuck in quick succession.

Sarah raised an eyebrow at Chuck: he knows?

Chuck nodded.

“It’s cute how you two do that,” Morgan said, his attention focused on the screen.

“Do what?” Sarah and Chuck asked.

“The whole talking without talking thing. And it’s also a little weird. It’s like you two have been dating for months instead of weeks.” Morgan fragged an enemy soldier, clicking his teeth together like he had with every kill going back as far as playing Super Mario Brothers together as kids. When he noticed the stares he was receiving, he cleared his throat. “Uh, how was your Christmas, Sarah?”

“It was good,” Sarah said, her voice amused. “How was yours? And I’m told we have you to thank for those last-minute seats for the Nutcracker?”

Morgan squirmed. Chuck didn’t blame him. He sometimes felt like doing the same when Sarah smiled at him. “Uh, yeah, I know a guy, that’s all.”

“Well, thank you, either way.” It looked to Chuck like Sarah had deliberately increased the wattage of her smile. She threaded her arm through Chuck’s.

Morgan glanced from the smile to the gesture and carefully set his controller on the arm of the couch. “Oh, right, I forgot I have to work early tomorrow, so I’d better—” He trailed off to fake a huge yawn. Chuck’s eyebrows rose, but the shorter man was already headed for the door. “I’ll see you around, Chuck, Sarah. Good night!”

“Night, buddy,” Chuck called after him. When the door closed behind his friend, he turned to Sarah. “That has to be a record. I’m impressed. I hope that you’re careful to use that power for good.”

“I’m selective,” Sarah said. She craned her neck to look around the apartment. “Where’s Casey?”

“NRA chapter meeting, and then he’ll probably go out for drinks with his Marine buddy afterward.”

“Oh. Good.” With that out of the way, Sarah leaned in and kissed him, slowly. 

Chuck had to think that he was getting better at not letting his brain shut down on him when she did that, since she smiled at him when she broke the kiss. Still, the lingering worry he had experienced over the past two weeks popped up. He shoved it to the back of his mind as he always did, but something must have leaked through, as Sarah gave him a wary look. “What is it?” she asked.

“It’s nothing. How was the drug bust?”

“Oh, you know, same old, same old.”

“So,” Chuck summarized, “he tried to get away, you chased after him and came down on him like the mighty hammer of Thor, and he ended up cuffed on the asphalt, crying like a little girl?”

“More or less. He didn’t keep up with his cardio, so there wasn’t much need to run.”

“You’re disappointed about that,” Chuck said, squinting at her.

Sarah laughed. “A little. It’s more fun when they run.”

“You’re a little bit of a psychopath, which somehow makes you even hotter.” Chuck smiled at her to let her know he was teasing before he turned back to the TV, intending only to save his game and shut the system down.

Sarah grabbed his wrist before that could happen. She had the mischievous smile on her face, the one that spelled trouble. “I’m just going to—” Chuck managed to say before she grabbed his face, giving him no choice in the matter. She pulled him toward her, scooting back until her back was against the arm rest and Chuck was almost on top of her, and kissed him.

They had agreed to move slowly, and Chuck supposed they still were since they weren’t anywhere near sleeping together yet, but he and Sarah had very different definitions of the word “slow.” By his definition, they would probably be barely past the stage of holding hands, but Chuck really didn’t mind the current pace, especially since he had discovered early that Sarah loved to be touched. It wasn’t surprising—she was always rubbing his arm or brushing against him—but until two weeks before, he hadn’t known just how much she loved having that sort of thing reciprocated. And even more than that, she seemed to love kissing him. They didn’t have many opportunities, since they had agreed that PDA at the office was verboten, but at times like these, when Casey and the others weren’t around, or in Sarah’s Jeep after the _Nutcracker_ show they had gone to see, Sarah had more than shown her enthusiasm for kissing him.

Even so, he broke the kiss now, gasping a little. Every sense felt like it was in overdrive, so that he was hyperaware of anything and everything to do with Sarah, but he still managed to focus the vision that had gone slightly blurry. “I really was just going to shut off the game so that I don’t die a horrible death.”

She grinned up at him, her face a little flushed. “Guess you’ll just have to go back to your last life-saver thingie.”

“Save point,” Chuck said, and gasped again when Sarah, obviously bored with conversation, gently bit his jaw. “And it wasn’t that long ago, I guess it’s not a big deal…”

Sarah’s snicker was muffled against his skin.

He might have heard the sounds of the “life lost” music playing in the background, but he wasn’t sure, and he didn’t care.

“Okay,” Sarah said some time later. She levered an elbow under herself, scooting so that she was almost sitting up and nearly shoving Chuck’s chin into her cleavage. He quelled the yelp and would have shot upright had Sarah not anticipated his move and grabbed his arm. She chuckled lowly. “What’s bothering you?”

Chuck blinked at her fuzzily. How was she able to _talk_ right now? “What? Why would something be bothering me?”

“Because something is,” Sarah said, meeting his eyes evenly. 

If there were downsides to dating a ninja, dating a psychic had to be even worse. A ghost of a frown crossed Chuck’s face. “How can you tell?”

“I couldn’t, actually. I thought something might have been, but I was bluffing. However, now…” Sarah poked him in the side, grinning when he jumped and glowered at her. “C’mon, out with it.”

“It’s nothing,” Chuck said.

Sarah narrowed her eyes.

“Really, if anything, it’s a little embarrassing. I’d rather get back to what we were doing.”

“Okay,” Sarah said, and returned to the kiss with an enthusiasm that seemed to shoot heat all the way through Chuck.

“You’re giving me very mixed signals here,” he said after a minute, squirming a little when Sarah played with the hair at the base of his skull, where it was starting to curl. She merely smiled and drew him into a long kiss that contained only a little bit of heat. “Very mixed signals.”

“You said you didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Did I?” He couldn’t remember a thing, let alone his own name. “Oh. My bad.”

“ _Do_ you want to talk about it?”

“I think—I don’t know what I’m thinking anymore. Never mind?”

“Good.” Sarah scooted down, pulling him with her. “Then shall we?”

Chuck lowered his head, and the front door opened. Even as Chuck froze, Casey glared at both of them for a long moment. He stalked to the entertainment center opposite them and opened up a box. Without saying a word, he showed them a cigar, accusingly, and walked past them. The bedroom door closed behind him with a loud click.

Sarah, who hadn’t tensed at Casey’s entrance, waited a beat and turned to Chuck, her eyebrow raised.

He sighed. “We have a system.”

“A system?”

“Every time he catches us, uh, doing anything, he gets a cigar.”

Sarah looked puzzled. “Why can’t you just give him the whole box?”

“Because that’s bribery.”

“And giving him one at a time isn’t—”

“We have a system. We don’t mess with the system,” Chuck said, using his “official” voice.

Sarah mimicked him, poorly. “Okay.”

“Speaking of systems, your super spy senses just failed us. You didn’t hear him coming?”

“I did. I didn’t care.” Sarah grinned impishly and stretched, bumping Chuck with her shoulder and knee. “Have you eaten yet?”

“There was pizza. There may still be pizza.”

“Pass. Too much grease.”

“That’s the whole point of pizza.”

“You eat like a frat boy.”

“I _was_ a frat boy.”

Sarah tilted her head. “Really?” she asked.

“Bryce convinced me to rush with him second semester Freshman year.” Chuck disentangled himself from Sarah and levered himself off of her with some difficulty, as she had several things in common with the average barnacle in situations like these. He didn’t mind, but apparently the making-out session of the evening was over, thanks to the fact that Casey was on the other side of the wall. “I think we’ve got some rabbit food left from when Ellie got it into her head to shop for us.”

“Rabbit food?” Sarah looked affronted.

Chuck realized he might be digging himself in a hole. “Delicious rabbit food?” he offered quickly.

Sarah wrinkled her nose. “You’re lucky I think you’re neat.”

“Indubitably.” Chuck pounded once on Casey’s door.

“What?” Casey sounded annoyed.

“Sarah’s cooking. You want anything?”

“Rabbit food?” Casey asked even as Sarah folded her arms and said, “I’m cooking, am I?”

“Yes,” Chuck called to Casey before he borrowed another page from Sarah’s book and raised an eyebrow as Casey declared that he had other things to do, like trim his toenails. “Do you really want _me_ to make rabbit food? I screw up microwaveable meals on a regular basis.”

“Point. But if I’m cooking, you have to at least eat some of it.” Sarah pulled her shirt back into place and headed into the kitchen. “And stop calling it rabbit food.”

“Uh-huh,” Chuck said, taking up a seat at the island. When Sarah had her back turned, rifling through the cabinets, he let the frown he’d been suppressing overtake his face. It was probably a stupid thing to obsess over, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. It had been two weeks, and he had yet to be the first to initiate a kiss.

**17 JANUARY 2008**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS**   
**15:21 PST**

“Hey, bro?”

Captain Awesome stuck his head into Chuck’s new office. With Ellie having started on her fellowship, Awesome was in charge of making sure that the Castle infirmary was fully stocked. Chuck tried not to think about it, as Ellie and Awesome’s office getting used meant that somebody was injured, but he appreciated having Awesome around.

He barely glanced away from the code he was reviewing as a favor to Dave now, though. “What’s up?”

“I’m, uh, a little worried that it’s going to come to fisticuffs if you don’t come upstairs, dude.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Chuck said, turning back to face the monitors. “Casey looks big and menacing, but I’m almost one hundred percent sure Sarah could kick his ass in her sleep. They’ll be fine.”

“Uh, the fact that you just said that makes me a little worried, man.”

“It’s really not a big—” Awesome’s original words finally broke through the haze of computer code. “You said fisticuffs?” He and Awesome glanced at the ceiling at the same time. “Oh, that can’t be good.”

He beat Awesome up the stairs by half a step and threw open the Scooby door. Even though his old office was empty, he could still hear them.

“— _your_ partner, not mine!”

“And I’m the one that successfully brought him in!”

“Yeah, because he stalked you on your date with the moron and—”

“Chuck is not a moron!”

Since he recognized real fury in Sarah’s voice, and that never led to anything good, Chuck crossed the office at a sprint and barreled through the door to the front room. “Hey-yo,” he said loudly, and both Sarah and Casey, who had been squared off, turned to glare at him. “What—what’s going on, guys? What’s shaking?”

Because Casey’s expressions always spoke for themselves, Chuck could clearly read the look he shot at Sarah: “You’re telling me this guy’s not a moron?”

Sarah rolled her eyes back at Casey.

“Bryce just got in touch. He wants a meet,” Sarah told Chuck. “We’re deciding who should go.”

“I say Agent Blondie here—”

“Blondie?” Sarah asked. “Real cute, Casey.”

Casey looked to Chuck for support, but the nerd hedged. “It _was_ a bit uncalled for,” Chuck said, wanting to shuffle his feet.

“Typical. Take her side.”

“You _just_ called her—”

“Larkin is CIA,” Casey interrupted, smugly folding his arms over his chest. “Ergo, he’s your problem, Walker.”

“Larkin is a member of a joint NSA-CIA taskforce,” Sarah shot back in the same tone. “ _Ergo_ , he’s also your problem, Casey.”

After feeling Bryce’s loneliness acutely a few weeks before, Chuck wanted to squirm. Even his teammates didn’t want to have anything to do with Bryce. Not that Chuck could blame them, as Bryce had ruined Sarah and Casey’s lives in very specific ways by blowing up the Intersect, but Chuck still felt a stab of pity for Bryce. “I can go,” he offered. “After all, he was my friend and—”

“No,” Casey and Sarah said on the same breath.

“You know Larkin better, Walker, you’ll be able to tell if he’s lying,” Casey went on.

“Why would he be lying, Casey?” Sarah looked exhausted, and apparently annoyed at having to defend Bryce. “He’s on our side.”

“Forgive me if I don’t personally think a guy who would blow up a major national security asset is entirely on the up and up, even if he does have the Bartowski and Walker seal of approval.” Casey glared from one to the other in turn. “I don’t understand why you’re not leaping at the chance, Walker. See your old pal, exchange war stories of how you slept your way to the top.”

“The CIA does not sanction seduction missions!”

Chuck’s eyebrows rose high but before he could dwell on that, a throat cleared behind him. Chuck and the others turned in surprise. Somehow, they had completely forgotten Awesome’s presence, which was a feat in itself. He still stood in the doorway, his eyebrows very high as he looked from one team member to the other. “Maybe you could flip a coin?” he offered.

“There’s an idea,” Sarah said, digging in her pocket for said coin. “Okay, Casey, call it.”

But Casey instead snatched the coin from Sarah. “Yeah, right, like I trust you and your spook sleight of hand.”

Sarah grabbed the coin back. “You went through some of the exact same training I did,” she said, scowling. “Chuck, you flip it.”

“Uh-uh. He’s biased. He’ll skew the results.”

“I don’t even know _how_ to do that,” Chuck said, puzzled. “It’s a coin toss, guys. It’s not like we’re negotiating hostility cessation in the Middle East!”

But Casey was adamant. In the end, it was decided that Captain Awesome should toss the coin for the agents, as he was far too awesome to throw the toss one way or the other.

Casey lost. 

**18 JANUARY 2008**   
**BACHELOR PAD**   
**00:32 PST**

Even though Chuck told himself he wasn’t waiting up for Casey, he knew deep down that he didn’t need to review the files Bryce had given him. He knew them inside and out, backwards and forward. He didn’t have Sarah’s damn near photographic memory, but he had looked over the files enough that if he closed his eyes, he could see them against the back of his eyelids like an Intersect flash. And he really shouldn’t be reading them again, as they only depressed him about just how little the government had on the creators of the Intersect. Chuck hadn’t seen so many black lines since a cable network had shown _Porky’s_ during primetime. 

Pen clenched in his teeth, Chuck flipped to a new page, his fingers stilling as they ran over the slightly raised text. The papers looked like they had been printed on an old ink-jet printer years before. This was the page where somebody hadn’t been quite careful enough with the black pen, and he could see the first letters of two of the Intersect co-creator code names. He had started calling them Dr. O and Dr. P. Sarah was busy collating data to see how many codenames started with those letters that she could find in the documents in the system, but as she had pointed out, P was a pretty common letter, seeing as even Chuck was technically one himself: Prometheus. She had let slip that in her training, she herself had once been an O: Ophelia.

Basically, he had nothing. And he knew it. He figured even Beckman knew it, which was why she had authorized Bryce handing these files off to him. He knew that even though Graham might be displeased about the methods used by Operation Prometheus, he appreciated having results to show to the different senatorial committees too much to give the current Intersect an escape route.

Besides, he wasn’t even sure he really wanted the Intersect out of his head. Things were okay. He was somewhat important to the government with the computer in his noggin, and he had Casey and Sarah and Ellie protecting him. He was even back in Burbank. There was really no need to poke at the status quo, not when he found he actually somewhat liked the status quo.

He glanced up when the door opened, admitting Casey and a gust of cool January air. “What’re you still doing up?” the NSA agent grunted. Since they didn’t have company, he began his usual process: tossing the keys in the bowl by the door, peeling out of his winter coat, checking the security system.

Chuck shrugged, though Casey wasn’t facing his way. “Just reviewing some old files. What did Bryce have to say?”

“A hell of a lot more after I convinced him that real agents don’t sit around making small talk when on deep undercover assignments.” Casey growled something else under his breath, and Chuck figured he was better off not translating. “He’s followed some leads on Ezersky’s company in the area, thinks he’s found the major buyer that authorizes the security between Krolik Enterprises and Fulcrum.”

“Out here in L.A.?” Chuck asked in surprise, setting the Intersect files aside.

Casey shrugged: what of it?

“It’s a bit coincidental, don’t you think?”

“L.A.’s a big city, Bartowski. Bad guys need to ogle starlets and get tans, too.” Casey scowled and dropped a manila folder on top of the stack beside Chuck. “Was going to give that to you tomorrow in the office, but since you’re here and awake, make yourself useful.”

Chuck tossed him a sarcastic salute. “Yes, sir.”

But he obeyed as Casey opened the fridge to root for a beer. The file didn’t contain much—a couple of pages, one the crinkly consistency of fax paper, and a grainy black and white photograph of a dark man in sunglasses and a designer suit climbing out of a Ferrari. The next page listed some pertinent data. His name was Piers Faulkner, he was a Swiss national who had studied at Oxford and had received his MBA at Brown. He was serving, Chuck read, as an interim VP of operations for Kaninchen Enterprises, based out of the L.A. as Casey had said.

“No flash?” Casey asked as he popped the beer top.

“The Intersect’s dry on this guy.” Chuck held the photo up to the light. “Looks rich.”

“Your brilliant spywork tell you that, Bartowski?”

Chuck gave Casey a wounded look. The other man rolled his eyes, but his tone was at least apologetic as he said, “That’s fine. I’ll pull his file tomorrow and we’ll see if we need to do any reconnaissance.”

“I can help with that.”

“Sure, leaving you in a van in broad daylight in L.A. would never lead to trouble.” At least this time there was a bit of humor in Casey’s voice as he took the file folder back from Chuck and tucked it under his arm. He paused by his bedroom door. “Anything else in those files?” he asked, nodding at the stacks of paperwork piled up around Chuck.

“Except for frustration? Not really, no.”

“You’re tenacious, Chuck. You’ll figure something out.” And before Chuck could ask if Casey had just said something nice to him, Casey vanished into his bedroom with the beer, leaving Chuck alone for the night.

**21 JANUARY 2008**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS**   
**09:43 PST**

“As far as I can tell, Faulkner’s not met up with any government contacts, suspected Fulcrum or otherwise,” Casey said, speaking over Chuck’s head to Sarah since the former was bent forward at the conference table, tweaking the GPS/cell phone jammer he was designing to fit easily on a car. “Larkin and I set up a drop point and he’s left a few names and possible leads, but so far…” He tossed a file onto the table in disgust. “We got nothing. Which is probably typical for the CIA, but as a respected employee of the National Security Agency, I’m a little less than thrilled, Walker.”

“In other words,” Sarah said, “you’re cranky, is what you are.”

Casey scowled, but didn’t deny it as he sipped his coffee.

“Unfortunately, right now, our enemy is faceless. We caught a break when Chuck stumbled onto their security system, as that gives us a place to start, but we’re really just grasping at straws.” Sarah frowned. “And I don’t think you can really blame this on the CIA.”

“But I want to.”

“Fair enough.”

“Nothing twigged in Faulker’s financials?”

“He donates an inordinate amount to charity every year, but I checked and it’s all legit. He gives quite a sizable donation to the American Ballet Company in particular.”

“Does he?” Casey’s tone told Chuck, who was only listening with one ear, exactly how suspicious he found that.

“His niece, Annalise, is studying to be a dancer.”

“Nepotism.” Casey snorted.

Chuck looked up from the jammer. “It runs in the family,” he deadpanned, and returned back to his work.

The other agents ignored him, possibly out of ease of long practice. 

“Any chance of getting close to him?” Sarah asked. “Anything come up on Kaninchen’s security that we can exploit?”

“For a possibly shady company, they’re a bunch of do-gooders and Samaritans.” Chuck glanced up from under his lashes just in time to see Casey sneer his opinion of that. “Not even a middle-manager that looks bribe-worthy. I’ll keep looking.”

“You do that.” Sarah sounded amused.

“In the meantime, you mind taking on a few background checks, Walker? Unless you want to run the financials again.”

“I’ll let them sit a couple of days. Give me any files you want me to run.”

Folders slapped onto the table between Chuck and Sarah with frightening alacrity. Apparently, Chuck thought as he looked up from adjusting an errant wire, Casey had long grown tired of sifting through the backgrounds of random employees that might or might not be connected to a shadowy government organization which still had no means, motive, or clear purpose.

He frowned, setting the pliers down. Before Sarah could pull the stack to her, Chuck reached out and picked up the top folder. “I know this logo,” he said, pointing at the business card stapled to the front flap. “I’ve seen this before.”

“Did you flash on it?” Sarah asked.

“No.” An Intersect flash would have meant that he could bring the information to the forefront of his mind without problem. As it was, the logo flitted at the edges of his memory, a hard concept to grasp. “It was somewhere recent. Maybe on a flyer, or a business card? Yeah, I think that was it…hold on, I’ll think of it any minute now.”

“Take your time,” Casey muttered. “We’ve got all year.”

Chuck ignored the barb. He was fairly certain he hadn’t seen the logo on a computer screen anywhere, which meant it was either older than his time in the bunker, or fairly recent, which meant… “Got it!” he said, nearly slapping his forehead when it hit him. “Morgan’s deejaying for somebody that works for Kaninchen, I think.”

Casey set a pen and a writing tablet in front of Chuck. “Get me a name, Bartowski.”

“Okay, hold on just a sec.” Chuck pulled his phone out and frowned. “That’s weird. I normally get great reception down here.”

Sarah pulled out her own phone and frowned. “Yeah, that’s odd. What…” She trailed off and smiled. “Chuck?”

“Yeah?” He was busy waving his phone in the air, trying to see if he could get reception. He looked down when Sarah wordlessly reached over in front of him and hit the switch on the jammer, powering it down. “Oh,” he said. “Right.”

He heard her quiet chuckle, undercut by Casey’s mutter, as he left the room to go talk to Morgan. 

“Andreas Kohlmeier,” he said a few minutes later, having convinced Morgan to leave a round of Mystery Crisper and retrieve the card from his desk. He had no idea what “Mystery Crisper” was or why it was so important, but his friend hadn’t been happy. Chuck had had to promise Morgan an extra gaming night that week. 

“Andy Kohlmeier is Piers Faulkner’s second in command,” Casey said. Since he hadn’t had to look at any files to know that name, Chuck figured he’d researched the guy plenty by now. He frowned, possibly trying to bring up details in his mind. “He’s got a birthday coming up. Friday.”

“That’s the night of the party,” Chuck said, frowning a little.

“Did he say where the party was?” 

“Yeah, he said it was at an office building and—” Chuck broke off when it hit him. Both of the other agents were watching him expectantly. Immediately, he began to shake his head. “Oh, no. No, no, no.”

Casey and Sarah exchanged a glance, and Chuck could practically see them deciding who would take point. Sarah won, apparently. “Chuck, this is the perfect opportunity to get in and do a little reconnaissance. Call Morgan back and see if he can get us on the list.”

“A little reconnaissance for us usually ends with a nuclear arms race,” Chuck said. “And I’m not doing that anywhere near my best friend. He’s the last link to my normal life, and I’m not wasting that.”

“The gnome,” Casey growled, “will be fine.”

“Can you guarantee that for me in writing, Casey?” Chuck glared. “I didn’t think so.”

“I can guarantee it with my foot shoved up your—”

“Casey!” Sarah cleared her throat and immediately Casey subsided into a formidable scowl. Sarah turned to face Chuck. “We’re not going to be running anything dangerous, Chuck. We just want to get in and see if we can plant some bugs, that’s all. We will do everything we can to ensure that Morgan is perfectly fine.”

Chuck folded his arms over his chest and said nothing. “Not happening,” he said. “And just so you know, nothing you say is going to convince me.”

**25 JANUARY 2008**   
**KANINCHEN ENTERPRISES**   
**08:07 PST**

“I hate this.”

“I know you do.”

“No, I really, really hate this.” Chuck scowled and put the rental they’d gotten for the night in park and took the keys out of the ignition. He didn’t look in the rearview mirror to adjust his bowtie again, since Sarah had told him to quit that, that it looked perfectly fine. He looked over at her in the passenger seat. Thankfully, he’d had the whole car ride to grow desensitized, as she had gone all out for the evening, and her dress didn’t cover much. “There’s really no other way to do this?”

“No easy way that’s low-risk to agents,” Sarah said. “Now, c’mon, give the valet your keys and we’ll go inside.”

Because every single one of his protests had fallen on deaf ears anyway, Chuck climbed from the car and did as he was bid, crossing around to open Sarah’s door for her. They’d pulled up to the Kaninchen office, where the birthday party for Andy Kohlmeier was being held. Morgan had been able to get Chuck and Sarah on the list without any problems, and Casey was waiting in the van, running the com channels. A valet service was waiting outside the office building, waiting to take the cars in a light drizzle. Chuck didn’t envy them at all.

Sarah twined an arm through his as they climbed the steps, adjusting her wrap with her free hand. “It’ll be okay, Chuck,” she said before they reached the front doors. “Morgan’s going to be just fine.”

Chuck wasn’t so sure as he allowed himself to be dragged inside.


	43. She’s the Blade and I’m Just Paper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. — _Dr. Seuss_

**25 JANUARY 2008**   
**KANINCHEN ENTERPRISES**   
**20:10 PST**

Sarah’s touch on his arm changed to a grip the instant they cleared the front doors into Kaninchen Enterprises, and Chuck figured that had more to do with the fact that they had just walked into a large crowd of partygoers rather than any fear of what the building might contain. Seeing the sheer number of people around did give him slight pause, but it put no more than a split-second hitch in his stride that he was able to pass off as fairly smooth. He had, he reflected, come quite a ways since that train station in Moscow.

He handed the invitation Morgan had given him to the man by the door and smiled absently at Sarah. She smiled back and tightened her grip on his arm yet again, and they descended into the main foyer.

Kaninchen Enterprises did well enough, apparently, to afford a high-class interior decorator. Their office building was done in the minimalist style, starkly black and white in a way that said a lot of money had been spent on very little. Chuck imagined the stage and catering tables set up around the spacious room weren’t normally present on a day-to-day basis, and that a few chairs or benches for waiting had been removed as well. Even though it was early by L.A. standards, the room was already beginning to fill: Andy Kohlmeier must be either very well-liked, or attendance was mandatory to Kaninchen employees.

“Quite the shindig,” he said, twisting his head around to get a better look at both the crowd and to scope for any security cameras.

Sarah made a play of coyly adjusting her earring. “Casey,” she said, “we’re in.”

“Roger that. Any trouble?”

“Nothing yet.”

“But the night’s still young,” Chuck said, and earned a small scolding look from Sarah. Spotting something on the other side of the room, he waved. “There’s Morgan. Let’s go say hi.”

“Why don’t you do that, and I’ll get us something to drink?”

Without Sarah’s hand on his arm, the room seemed just a bit more crowded, but Chuck weaved his way through the mass of people in suits and cocktail dresses, nodding occasionally as though he had seen an acquaintance. Morgan’s setup was a little different from what Chuck remembered of the Halloween party. There was no giant banner of Luke Skywalker wearing headphones on the table where Morgan had set up his deejay equipment, though the logo was present on the stack of the business cards in the corner.

“Hey! You made it!” Morgan dropped one earpiece of the earphones around his neck, still holding up the other side to make sure he could hear the music properly. “Swanky party, right?”

“It’s definitely fancy. Like the tie.”

“Thank you, thank you.” Morgan adjusted something on his soundboard. The bright red tie was the only splash of color on his person, as he had gone with a black shirt and trousers, and a black pin-striped vest to complete the ensemble. “Where’s your lovely date?”

“Fetching drinks.”

“Free drinks are the best thing about events like this. Oh, and the hot women. And the appetizers, of course.” And because it was Morgan, he began to list every single appetizer currently being served on silver trays held aloft by wandering caterers. Chuck figured he had arrived early simply to chat up the caterers and get the scoop on what was being served. He was still waxing poetic about the crab-stuffed mushrooms when Sarah joined them, balancing not two but three glasses of wine.

“I didn’t know your wine preference. Red okay?” she asked Morgan.

“Red is _delicious_ ,” Morgan said, nodding his thanks as he took the third wineglass from Sarah. “Look at my boy Chuck here, taking you to all these fancy shindigs. Don’t tell anybody, but I think there are going to be some celebrities here tonight.”

“Oh yeah?” Sarah’s eyes sparkled with enough fun that Chuck knew she was just humoring Morgan. Despite his best efforts, Sarah hadn’t actually picked up on too much pop culture in the weeks they had been dating.

“Well, I heard rumors of the cast of _C.H.i.P.S._ swinging by.” Morgan looked sage for a split second before he was called back to his turntable to mix the next song.

Chuck raised his eyebrows at Sarah and clinked his wineglass against hers. “Here’s to Erik Estrada?” he asked, smiling despite the mild nausea. He’d spent the entire time talking to Morgan looking around for either Piers Faulkner or Andy Kohlmeier. He hadn’t seen either, but he knew in just a short time, he and Sarah would have to break free from the party and do a little corporate espionage.

“Whoever that is,” Sarah agreed, drawing his thoughts away from just how many things could go wrong—and how many things could go wrong with Morgan nearby.

When Morgan had successfully sent the next song spinning into its full volume, he dropped the earphones back around his neck and grinned at his friends. “Totally beats a Friday night at home on the couch, right?”

Chuck had to fight not to flush, remembering exactly what Sarah had done to him, or with her tongue, when they had last been on a couch together. He took a hurried sip of wine. “Definitely.”

When Morgan’s grin abruptly turned serious, Chuck almost swung around to look for danger. But Morgan only cleared his throat. “Sorry, the boss isn’t much for the staff mingling with the guests,” he said, quickly moving his own wineglass from view. “And drinking on the job.”

“Guess that’s our cue to go mingle with others, then?” Sarah asked, threading her arm through Chuck’s again. “Don’t want to get you in trouble, after all.”

“Thanks,” Morgan said, shooting a look over his shoulder. Chuck followed his gaze and spotted a man in a dark suit similar to Morgan’s own scowling at the deejay table. Chuck gave Morgan a wave as Sarah pulled him away.

“See?” Sarah said once they were out of hearing range. “He’s fine. Surrounded by people, even.”

“Which is not normally an area where you’d consider Morgan out of danger,” Chuck noted, but he did feel somewhat better. “Are we really going to mingle?”

“Of course we are.” Sarah twisted her earring again. “How are you doing, Casey?” The last was said into the mic on her watch.

“Fine and dandy,” was his the sarcastic reply. “Let me know when you get a tap into the security cameras, then I’ll finally have something to do.”

Sarah and Chuck exchanged a glance after the com went silent. “We should bring him a doggy bag of appetizers,” Chuck said. “Apparently the crab-stuffed mushrooms are to die for, and if there’s one thing that Morgan can be trusted to know well, it’s free food. He’s like a free food gourmand.”

“A glowing recommendation,” Sarah said. “Let’s walk around and mingle.”

Which was, Chuck thought, the spy version of “Let’s case the joint,” but he allowed Sarah to drag him around by the arm—though he tried not to make it look like that—and pull him into one random conversation after the next. Since they were here under their own names, Chuck was a software programmer, and Sarah managed his small firm. Small talk, especially small talk with strangers, would forever make Chuck feel awkward, but he did his best not to bring up anything from the Roddenberry _oeuvre_ and embarrass Sarah.

They had just gracefully navigated their way out of chitchat about the Lakers with a couple of Kaninchen’s investors from Monterey when Chuck turned and nearly ran into a tall man in an expensive suit. Even though the description could fit for most of the men at the party, Chuck recognize Andy Kohlmeier from the surveillance pictures he had been looking at all week. It took everything he had not to jolt.

“Ooh, Chuck, be careful,” Sarah said, grabbing Chuck’s arm to pull him back from an imminent collision with Kohlmeier. She turned a company smile toward Kohlmeier. “Sorry about that, Mr…?”

“Yes, very sorry,” Chuck said quickly. 

“Kohlmeier. Andy Kohlmeier. And it was my fault, so no worries. I have this terrible habit of not looking where I’m going. It drives my assistant crazy.” 

Chuck shook Kohlmeier’s hand. “Chuck Bartowski,” he said by way of introduction. “Believe it or not, I have the same problem. Sarah here had to save me from walking into a wall just last week.” He didn’t mention the fact that it had been Sarah’s fault—or rather more particularly her smile—that had nearly been the cause of his almost-collision with said wall.

“Nasty enemies, those walls,” Kohlmeier said, once Sarah had introduced herself as Chuck’s business associate. Kohlmeier was health-club fit with boyish good looks and just a hint of a crooked eyetooth. His accent was faintly Germanic, which made sense given that he had been born in Mannheim. “I hope you haven’t had any troubles with the walls here?”

“Not at all.” Chuck laughed and abruptly remembered the non-spy purpose for their being at the party at all. “Oh, and happy birthday, Mr. Kohlmeier.”

“It’s amazing how many times a man can turn twenty-nine, isn’t it?” said a new voice, and Chuck nearly jolted anew when they were joined by the other object of their surveillance, none other than Piers Faulkner himself. He was a head shorter than Andy Kohlmeier and quite a few years older, but he had the same style of expensive suit and the same genial air.

Introductions were made again, and this time Sarah confessed that they were passing acquaintances with the deejay, and that they were there on behalf of Pacific Securities. “We’ve heard some wonderful things about Kaninchen,” she said, pronouncing it with the same proper German accent the men had used earlier.

Piers Faulkner seemed to be a bit of a womanizer, judging by the way he stepped a little closer to Sarah. “And tell me,” Faulkner said, as Chuck clenched his jaw, his smile turning into a grimace, “is Kaninchen living up to your expectations?”

Sarah laughed and tilted her head. Chuck reminded himself that it was for the mission. “Of course, Mr. Faulkner. We were just admiring the Kandinsky over there on the wall.” She indicated it with another tilt of her head. “An inspired choice. I’ve always loved his Blue Rider period.”

“The lady has good taste,” Piers Faulkner said, bowing low over Sarah’s hand.

For the mission, Chuck told himself when Sarah giggled. She’s acting.

Andy Kohlmeier turned, drawing Chuck’s attention away from the other two. “So, how’s the software game? I have to say, I miss it. I moved into consulting about ten years back, and every once in awhile, I still miss those all-night coding sessions.”

“Consider me jealous. I would like to miss more of those,” Chuck said. “I got less sleep during my senior C++ thesis than I ever have in my life. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw code.”

Kohlmeier laughed, and the sound was rich and inviting, almost infectious. “Everything’s built on frameworks now. Makes me nostalgic for the old-school days.”

“Old-school? I’ll give you old-school. My roommate at Stanford and I coded an entire Zork game from the bottom-up on an old TRS-Eighty.”

“What, there wasn’t a PDP-Ten available?”

“Well,” Chuck said, shuffling his feet in an “aw shucks” sort of way, “we didn’t want to seem pretentious.”

This time, Kohlmeier’s laugh made Faulkner look away from Sarah and over at them. “What?” the Swiss national asked, and Chuck learned something new about their target: he didn’t like to be left out of a joke. 

“Geek shop-talk, boss,” Kohlmeier said, clapping Faulkner on the shoulder, and Chuck blinked at Sarah to see a brief look of annoyance flit over her face. What had he done now? He gave her a puzzled look, but she gave a minute shake of her head: not now. “Just reliving our glory days, which are farther behind for some of us than others here.”

“I thought you were only twenty-nine?” Chuck asked innocently.

When Andy Kohlmeier gave a genuine belly-laugh, Chuck grinned and sipped his wine. It was hard to imagine that this man would be involved in a secret government conspiracy, though he could suspect Piers Faulkner in a second. Something about the older man just struck him as off.

“I’m very sorry to do this, gentleman, but if you’ll excuse me, I need to steal Chuck away for a few minutes,” Sarah said, smiling apologetically for the benefit of the Kaninchen employees. They made their farewells and Sarah pulled Chuck toward the table of food alongside the edge of the room. He went willingly; he hadn’t eaten before the mission out of nerves, and he wanted to know if the crab-stuffed mushrooms were as good as Morgan had claimed. But Sarah changed course a few feet from the food and instead led him deeper into Kaninchen, into a hallway where only a few of the partygoers mingled. The bathrooms were apparently back this way.

“Good work, Bartowski,” Casey said.

Chuck fiddled with his lapel to bring the mic closer to his mouth. “Uh, thanks, Casey.” He paused. “For what?”

“Kohlmeier liked you for whatever reason. Now we’ve got an in to use if we need to.”

Chuck’s eyebrows went up. “Wait, what? I don’t know about this—”

“Relax, it’ll be fine,” Sarah said before he could get started. “I was trying to work on Faulkner, but apparently Kohlmeier is our in.”

A spike of aggravation, which Chuck thought he’d managed to hide rather well during the conversation with the possibly-Fulcrum-hosts-of-the-party, rose. “Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days?” Chuck asked with more bitterness than he had intended.

One of Sarah’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, so you did notice.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You didn’t even blink when I started flirting with Faulkner.”

Now Chuck did blink. “I figured it was for the mission.”

“It was.” Sarah let out a huff of breath.

“Then…okay? You didn’t mean it, did you?”

“No.”

“Then why am I supposed to be upset over this?” Though he had been, a little. It didn’t seem worthy of mentioning when he was so puzzled.

“Never mind.” Sarah turned abruptly and started heading down the hall—an area Chuck was pretty sure was supposed to be off-limits to partygoers. At least, he corrected in his mind, it was off-limits beyond the bathrooms. Sarah proved this by sending a furtive glance around, searching for security cameras. 

Wordless now, Chuck followed her. He wasn’t sure if he wasn’t supposed to talk because they were officially on the covert part of the operation, or if she was mad at him. If it was the latter, he had no idea why. He’d acted in a logical and thoughtful manner, hadn’t he?

They headed down the hallway, not at a brisk trot but definitely moving a little quicker than normal. Outside of its main showroom foyer, Kaninchen seemed to break down into a regular office building. No fancy Kandinsky paintings on these walls, Chuck noticed, since the artwork inside the building trended toward motivational posters and paintings of fields that were supposed to be soothing. He eyed a few as they passed.

“I’m not proud,” Sarah said suddenly.

Chuck blinked and swiveled his face toward her. “Uh, okay?”

“What? I’m not.”

“I feel like this is one of those conversations where I was supposed to have a script, and I never got one.” Chuck made the observation idly, and he didn’t miss the fact that Sarah rolled her eyes.

“I feel like this is one of those conversations,” Casey said from the van, “that made me want to shoot myself in the head ten minutes ago.”

“Poor Casey,” Chuck said, since the other man was at least half a mile away, and that was plenty of lead time to run if he needed it. Seeing a placard by a door up ahead, he put a hand on Sarah’s arm to stop her. “This what you were looking for?”

“Yep. Stay here.” Sarah opened her clutch and withdrew something. The clutch, she handed to Chuck. “Hold that.”

“I really am your boyfriend,” Chuck observed before it caught on exactly what Sarah had pulled out. “Whoa! Hey! I thought you said this was a no-killing mission!”

Sarah shook her head a little and checked the gun, which was tiny compared to the Silver Monster. “Relax, it’s a tranq gun. I’m using twilight darts.”

“You’re going to tranq the security guy? Won’t that give us away when somebody tries to get in touch with him?”

“He’ll only be out for a few minutes,” Sarah said, “while you loop the security footage.”

“Oh. Is that what I’m doing? Nice to have a plan.”

“Isn’t it, though? Stay put.” Sarah flashed him one quicksilver-stop-your-heart smile before she turned and strode easily into the security room, as though she were walking into a supermarket or a library. Before the door had even closed, though, Chuck heard a “What the—” and the _thwpp_ of the tranq gun preceding an ominously loud thud.

He didn’t even have time to panic that Sarah might have been hit before she reappeared, poking her head through the door and smiling at him. “Time to work your magic. I’d hurry if I were you. He’s bigger than I expected, so the tranquilizer probably won’t work too long.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Chuck said, and slipped past her into the security office. It wasn’t overly large since only one guard was supposed to be on duty at a time, but all of the monitors—controlled by two keyboards on a desk—looked new and fancy. Chuck had to step around the portly security officer, who was slack-faced and slumped on the floor, to get to the desk chair.

“Well, there’s our confirmation that this company really is affiliated with Ezersky,” he said after a few strokes on one of the keyboard let him right into the system. “Same security protocols. Let’s see…oh, good, the time stamp isn’t embedded until the video’s exported, so I’ll just loop last night’s footage and leave the party footage live so that there’s no discrepancy there. I hope nobody was working late last night.” Chuck muttered to himself while he worked, doing his best to keep one part of his brain alert to Sarah in case she needed anything.

Still, the second _thwpp_ of the tranq gun going off made him jump and nearly fall out of his seat. “Gah!”

“What?” Sarah looked puzzled, standing over the security guard. “He was starting to wake up.”

“And he’s not going to remember being shot by a statuesque blonde?”

It looked like Sarah might be preening, but that was possibly a trick of the light. “They’re twilight darts. He won’t remember anything. How’s the looping going?”

Chuck turned back to his task. “Almost done. Just need to…” He trailed off into a flurry of typed commands and finally hit Return. “Done! We should be fine to wander around without Gonzo here noticing us.”

“Excellent. Help me get him back in the chair, then.”

It took both of them, with Casey occasionally laughing in their ears (“What is _going_ on in there, Walker? Is Bartowski passing a kidney stone?”), but they managed to work the security guard back into his chair. Chuck wiped at his forehead once Paul, for that was what the guard’s nametag said, slumped at the computer. “Okay, I knew I took a couple of days off the exercise regiment, but this guy makes me feel like I don’t lift weights at _all_. Guh. Maybe I need to start lifting more.”

Sarah grinned. “C’mon,” she said, leading the way out.

It took them a few minutes to find Andy Kohlmeier’s office, and for the first little while, Chuck jumped at every noise, terrified that he hadn’t looped the cameras properly, but nobody came around the corner, demanding to know what they were doing there. Sarah picked the lock to get into the office while Chuck kept watch, or, as she put it, played lookout.

Kohlmeier had obviously either been with the company a long time, or his job was massively important, for his office was huge. Even so, Chuck only got two steps in before he stumbled to a halt. His jaw dropped. A minute later, after he had regained the power of speech, he said, “Sarah?”

“Yes?” She’d gone straight to the desk.

“You’re really lucky you’re hot, and lethal, and I’m not gay because if any of those three weren’t true, I’d go find Andy Kohlmeier right now and offer to have his babies.”

Sarah looked up, startled, but after she’d followed Chuck’s gaze, she laughed. “Score one for being an attractive assassin. When you’re done ogling the TRON poster, maybe you could help out and copy that hard drive like you’re supposed to.”

“I hate you both so much right now,” Casey commented from the van.

“Sorry, Casey,” Chuck said automatically. “All set up and ready to receive?”

“Roger that.”

Chuck set up the same dish and cloner he had used in Sergei Ezersky’s estate, hooking both into Andy Kohlmeier’s computer. He’d made a few changes to the file system on the drive, freeing up a little more bandwidth, and the hard drive on the computer wasn’t as large, which meant the copying time went infinitely faster. While they waited for the transfer to finish, Chuck and Sarah went through the papers in the desk, using the CIA issued spy camera (“It’s so wee!”) to photograph anything they felt might be pertinent. Chuck went through the desk drawers; Sarah searched the shelves.

“Anything else?” she asked.

Chuck lifted the top from a decanter and sniffed. “He even has great taste in alcohol. Want some?”

Sarah gave him a pained look.

“Yeah, drinking and missions probably don’t mix well, you’re right. What are we at, Casey?”

“Ninety-six percent. What’s he drink?”

“Smells like scotch. Probably single-malt and older than you or me, Case.”

“Maybe you could slip out a flask?” Casey sounded almost wistful.

Chuck glanced at Sarah, who smiled even as she shook her head no. “Better not,” Chuck said regretfully. “But have another cigar when we get back. On me.”

“I feel like all of this conversation tonight has earned me more than one cigar, Bartowski.”

Chuck winced. He had a point.

In Piers Faulkner’s office, just down the hall from Kohlmeier’s, they found a very similar set-up. Faulkner, however, didn’t seem to have Kohlmeier’s neatness, or his taste in movies, both of which Chuck found very unfortunate. While Faulkner’s hard drive copied to Casey out in the van, Chuck tried to make heads or tails of the paperwork on the desk, though he had to be careful about not moving anything too much. For all he knew, Faulkner was one of those messy people who still knew exactly where everything was.

“Man, has this guy never heard of a dust-buster?” he asked, kneeling by the desk to look underneath.

“Probably not. But the cleaning staff should have. Be careful about moving anything too much.”

“I’m being careful, I promise.” Chuck edged the desk drawers open and peered inside. He photographed everything in the “Krolik” file as a precaution, though none of the other files seemed important enough. And nothing, oddly, caused a flash. It made him feel like he should maybe be the one in the van, instead of Casey, but he pushed that thought away. He had other things to offer than the Intersect, and he had more than proven that tonight alone.

“Transfer complete,” Casey announced. “Finalizing now.”

“Wow, already?” Chuck checked his watch and blinked to see that it had been a full five minutes since they had entered Faulkner’s office. “Heh, guess time flies when you’re breaking and entering. Disconnecting, Casey.”

“Go ahead.”

Once he had all of his computer equipment stored in the special holster fitted underneath his suit jacket, he gave Sarah a nod. “Need to look anywhere else?”

“I’m clear. Casey, we’re heading back to the party. We’ll notify you when we’re down there.”

“Roger that. I’ll pack up here.”

And just like that, Chuck and Sarah headed down the hall, leaving Piers Faulkner’s office (hopefully) exactly how they had found it. When Casey and Sarah had talked about the mission against Kaninchen, Chuck had been expecting more _Mission: Impossible_ style antics, dropping down from the ceiling with ropes and catching drops of sweat before they could set off the sensors. Tranquing one guard and simply walking into offices, cloning hard drives, and walking out again felt anticlimactic. 

They left the executive offices, taking the stairs rather than the elevator since they weren’t sure if the elevators were hooked into the security office, again walking hurried but not in what Chuck felt was an overly incriminating fashion. As they approached the safe zone—where the other partygoers were allowed to wander—he asked, “Is it just me, or did that seem really easy?”

“I don’t know what you mean by—crap.” Sarah tensed, and a split-second after her, Chuck heard the sound of footsteps approaching at a fast clip. Immediately, Sarah grabbed for the nearest door handle, but the door was securely locked.

They were too far from the party to play it off that they had gotten lost. Chuck felt panic speed up and down his spine. Should he run? Should he tell Sarah to grab the twilight tranq gun? How on earth could they ever hope to explain being this far from the party?

He was still searching for an escape route when Sarah reached up, hooked one arm around the back of his neck, and dragged him to her. He made a noise in surprise and stumbled forward, accidentally slamming her into the wall behind her. She might have grunted, but he didn’t notice, for she set in on him more insistently than she ever had during any of their make-out sessions, yanking him so that his body was molded against hers, one hand sneaking under his jacket and the other moving up into his hair.

He had exactly less than two seconds to think, _Oh, crap_ before he couldn’t think at all. Sarah left him no choice; she kissed him vigorously, using a great deal more tongue than she ever had before. Chuck gasped when she bit his bottom lip, and focused on keeping up. Somehow, he found his hand tangling in her hair, which had been swept into some fancy up-do for the party. It tumbled free now, silky against his fingers, and he deepened the kiss, wanting _more_ , though how it was possible, he didn’t know. He heard Sarah make a noise somewhere between a moan and a gasp, and his heart sped up even faster. The hand she’d slid under his jacket bunched in his shirt, pulling his collar uncomfortably tight, but he ignored it. All that mattered was exactly the way Sarah was kissing him back and how _good_ she felt under his hands and—

“Ahem.”

The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, but it startled him. Chuck tore his mouth away from Sarah’s and blinked sluggishly to see that they were definitely not alone in the hall.

The woman was tiny, maybe topping five feet in her heels, and Chuck figured she probably wasn’t usually that shade of pink. She also wouldn’t look straight at them. “I’m sorry, but this area is off-limits to…party guests. I’m going to have to ask that you return to the party.”

Sarah’s jolt felt real and she pushed Chuck away from her, the picture of embarrassment. “Oh, my god! I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize—we kinda got carried away.” And she gave an embarrassed giggle.

Chuck’s brain was still a bit foggy, but he thought she sounded different. Midwestern, he concluded after a few seconds of hard thought. Still, all he was able to add to the conversation was a lame, “Sorry.”

“It’s all right, just don’t let it happen again,” the woman said. She cleared her throat and continued to look anywhere but at them, which Chuck figured was fair. He and Sarah had just put on quite the show, judging by the fact that his suit was disheveled and Sarah’s hair was a mess. “Do you need me to, ah, escort you back?”

“We’ve got it,” Sarah said, looping her arm through the crook of Chuck’s arm. “We’ll go straight back. Scout’s honor.” She even held up three fingers to prove it.

“All right.”

The instant they had hurried away, Sarah hauling on Chuck more than anything, Casey demanded in their ears, “What the hell was that?”

“We’re clear,” Sarah said, cutting him off. “Go ahead and head out, Casey. Chuck and I are going to stay at the party with Morgan for a little while. We’ll rendezvous at the Bachelor Pad.”

“And you should probably take a couple more cigars,” Chuck said.

After a token grumble from Casey, the com went silent. Sarah took her earpiece out, gesturing that Chuck should do the same. When he’d handed it over, she set the earwigs in her clutch alongside the tiny little tranq gun. She put a hand on Chuck’s arm outside the bathroom to stop him before they reached the rest of the party. Though there had been people mingling there earlier, the area was now empty.

“I’m sorry,” Chuck said, blinking a few times. “Did randomly making out to avoid getting caught just work? Because I really thought that only worked in the movies and on TV.”

“Trust me, I’m just as surprised.” Sarah blew out a long breath and ran her fingers through her hair. Inexplicably, she covered her mouth with the back of her hand, but Chuck still heard it: a muffled giggle. It made him grin hesitantly back at her, which apparently only made it worse. Sarah started chuckling, then laughing outright until she had to lean against the wall to support herself. After a few seconds, Chuck began laughing as well, though he knew it was more relief than anything else.

“Did you see her _face_?” Sarah asked once she was able to talk again. She wiped tears of mirth away with the back of her hand. “She was bright red!”

“It was like a stop sign,” Chuck agreed, still laughing a little. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody turn that red in my life.”

“I have,” Sarah said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, you went the color of a siren when you walked in on me in the shower.”

Chuck felt a similar flush begin now. “Oh, God, I can’t think about that right now!” He was pretty positive he might actually explode. He groaned. “Cruel woman.”

“Sorry.” Sarah didn’t look very apologetic, though. She glanced around, evidently satisfied that their laughing fit hadn’t attracted anybody. “I’m going to go to the ladies’ room, tidy up and fix my hair. I’d recommend you fix your suit.”

When she reached over to help him out with that, though, Chuck took a hurried step back. He still felt on the verge of exploding. “I’m okay, I’ve got it.”

Though Sarah gave him a puzzled look, she let the matter drop with a shrug and disappeared into the restroom. In the men’s room, Chuck went straight to the sink and splashed cold water on his face until he regained some facsimile of equilibrium. He straightened his suit and tie, marveling at how much damage Sarah had done to his careful appearance in under two minutes. Of course, and the thought made him flush a little, he had more than returned the favor.

There was no trace of any discomposure when Sarah came out of the bathroom, however. Her hair was right back up in the same twist as before, and she didn’t even look remotely pink-cheeked.

“You have an army of elves or something,” Chuck said, peering at her suspiciously.

“What are you talking about?”

“They follow you around and make sure your hair is perfect all the time, don’t they? Don’t deny it.”

Sarah laughed. “You’re being absurd.”

“You’re not denying it.”

“Because you’re being absurd.”

“This isn’t the last you’ve heard from me about this,” Chuck warned, and Sarah laughed. They headed out into the party, once more the picture of respectability, as though they hadn’t been breaking and entering and then making out in the hallways of Kaninchen Enterprises. While they had been gone, dancing had started up. Morgan stood at the deejay table overlooking the dance floor, wearing his earphones and bopping his head along to the music. Chuck felt a stab of guilt; after spending a week fretting over running a mission near Morgan, he had actually forgotten completely that his friend was even at the party.

Morgan waved them over. “Boss stepped outside for a smoke,” he said, “so I’m free for a little while. Where the hell were you two? I’ve been looking all over forever.”

“Sorry, we, ah…” Chuck trailed off and blinked to see an actual flush overtake Sarah’s face. He almost asked how she could do that, but his brain warned him that she was acting for Morgan’s benefit, and it was probably better not to ruin it for her.

“Ah,” Morgan said, nodding his head sagely. He waggled his eyebrows at Chuck. “Say no more. I completely understand.”

Chuck had to fight down the desire to claim nothing of what Morgan was implying had happened, though it clearly had. “Yeah,” was all he said. “How’ve things been going out here?”

“Great. I’ve had a few people take cards!”

“Awesome!”

“Hey, you two should get out there and dance.” Morgan seemed inordinately excited about the idea. “I’ve got a song in mind just for you.”

Chuck squinted.

“And no,” Morgan went on, correctly interpreting the look, “it’s not the ‘Hamster Dance,’ I swear.”

“Good.”

“Long story,” Morgan told Sarah. “Go on, go on, dance, have a good time. I’ll put on a classic for you—I’ve got just the thing.”

Sarah arched a brow at Chuck. “The man said dance.”

“That he did. We have our orders.” Chuck nodded his farewell to Morgan and made a show of offering his arm to Sarah, and she giggled coquettishly as she accepted. He picked a spot on the dance floor at random, as it wasn’t overcrowded but there were a few people around. Surely enough, the current song faded out very skillfully to a much slower number. Chuck was surprised to hear a trumpet playing an almost mournful melody, but after a few notes, he recognized _La Vie En Rose_. It was an…interesting song choice, he decided, but he didn’t mind, as Sarah all but had her head resting on his shoulder.

“I still can’t believe that the make-out trick worked,” he said after they’d revolved in place for a minute. “I thought for sure I’d jinxed us and we were busted.”

“You did jinx us.” Sarah lifted her head to smile at him. “But that’s okay, I’ll forgive you this time.” She leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss him, drawing this kiss out with just a touch of the same heat that had nearly made them tear at each other like animals in the hallway.

She made it look so easy, he thought. Even though she was reserved and some people might think her cold because of it—though he never would—Sarah had no problem showing affection, or being the first one to kiss him, while he had to think and doubt and second-guess before he could even do something like put a hand on her arm. Even though she had made it clear on more than one occasion that she never minded him touching her, he still had to fight his natural instincts every time.

Now, she must have caught something on his face that he was trying to hide. “What is it?” she asked, leaning back a little.

They continued to rotate in place in time to the music. “It’s nothing,” Chuck said.

“I don’t think it is. Half the time I kiss you, you get that look on your face. What’s wrong?” Sarah looked briefly worried. “Is it something I did? Do you not like the kissing?”

“No, no, that’s not it,” Chuck said quickly. He gave a nervous laugh. “God, no, that’s really not it, I promise. It’s stupid, and it’s nothing.”

“Then why don’t you want to tell me about it?”

Chuck wanted to shuffle his feet, but he figured that would only mean stepping on Sarah’s toes. So he cleared his throat and looked down—right into her cleavage. He looked up quickly again. “You’ll laugh at me,” he sighed.

“If I promise not to laugh at you, will you tell me what it is?”

Chuck hedged, and did shuffle his feet this time, though he didn’t step on Sarah, thankfully.

She raised an eyebrow and removed her hand from his shoulder, holding out one finger. “Pinky promise, I won’t laugh.”

Chuck wrinkled his nose at the extended finger. “I think it’s in the Guy Code that pinky promises are a girl thing.”

“Very well.” Sarah put her hand back on his shoulder. “C’mon, Chuck, just tell me what it is. I won’t laugh.”

“I doubt that.” Chuck took a deep breath. He knew _that_ look on Sarah’s face. She could be tenacious when she wanted to be, and he had a feeling she wouldn’t drop this unless he asked her to, and then she would be hurt. So he sighed. “It doesn’t bother you that I’ve yet to kiss you?”

“Er, I’m sorry to state the obvious here, but we’ve kissed plenty of times.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, I have yet to…start things. And doesn’t it bother you?”

He could see her consider the idea seriously, which made him want to both sink into the floor and simultaneously be grateful that she wasn’t laughing or ridiculing him. “I don’t see why it would,” she said at length, still looking thoughtful.

“Really?”

“Really. I mean, we said we were going to take things slow. I’m pretty sure the words ‘catching up’ and ‘not a race’ were used.” Sarah met his eyes, and now her gaze was perfectly frank. “I don’t want to push you to where you’re not comfortable, Chuck.”

“Oh.” Chuck wasn’t sure what to say to that. He frowned. “You really hadn’t noticed?”

Sarah shrugged. “No.”

“But you notice _everything_.”

“Apparently not.”

He didn’t feel like a huge weight had been lifted from his chest, but the feeling came close. Chuck let out a deep breath in relief and felt a smile blossom. “Don’t tell anybody, but I think you may be the most perfect woman in the world, Sarah Walker.”

“Oh trust me, I’m not perfect.” Sarah’s voice was emphatic. Her brows drew low over her eyes and she tilted her head. “That’s really what was bothering you?”

Chuck hunched his shoulders. “Yes.”

When the smile bloomed, he had to blink at its brilliance. Sarah outright grinned at him. “That is just so adorable,” she said, and rested her head on his shoulder again, almost burrowing in like she did every time she used him for a makeshift pillow. 

“I’m glad _you_ think so,” Chuck grumbled.

Sarah lifted her head to smirk at him. “You know,” she said, and there was an undertone of fun to her voice that was both appealing and made him feel wary at the same time, “if you wanted to, say, break the ice or get it over with and solve that problem, I promise to stand very still. I’m pretty tall. It’s pretty much a sure shot that you wouldn’t miss.”

“Oh ha, ha,” Chuck said. He gave her a mock-scowl. “And that wouldn’t solve the problem.”

“It wouldn’t?”

“No, it has to be spontaneous to work.”

“Aw,” Sarah said, her grin widening. “I can pretend to be surprised. I’m a great actress.”

“I’ve noticed,” Chuck said. “I’ve seen Valley Girl Sarah, an Oscar-worthy performance.”

“Does this mean I get to thank the Academy?” Sarah tilted her head again, looking thoughtful once more. “I suppose I could _order_ you to kiss me, but who knows how well you would listen. Hm, this is most perplexing indeed.”

“I’m regretting bringing this up.”

“Why? I’m just grateful it’s not like I’ve secretly got halitosis or something. And I haven’t laughed.”

“You’re a real woman of your word.”

“Seriously, Chuck,” and Sarah sobered a little, though the corners of her lips still curved upward, “just kiss me.”

“If it’s an order, it doesn’t solve the problem.”

“Then don’t kiss me.”

“And be viewed as contrary?”

“Oh yeah, that would really be a stretch right now,” Sarah said, sarcasm dripping as the final notes of _La Vie En Rose_ drifted across the dance floor.

Chuck finally let the grin he’d been holding back for the past minute emerge. “I suppose I could suffer through it,” he said, and leaned down just as Morgan sent a new song spinning through the turntable. The opening notes blared out, so upbeat and different from the mellow tones of the previous song that Chuck jumped and froze, a hairsbreadth away from Sarah.

“What?” Sarah opened her eyes and looked panicked. “What is it?”

“He didn’t,” Chuck breathed, not believing his ears.

The panic only increased. “Who?” 

“Morgan. He wouldn’t…” But the minute the singing started, Chuck knew. He closed his eyes and groaned.

“What? Chuck, what’s wrong?”

Chuck opened his eyes to give Sarah a pained look. “We’ve been Rickroll’d!”


	44. Casey Have I Loved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own…how much kinder, how much gentler he would be. —William Allen White

**31 JANUARY 2008**   
**CASTLE: GUN RANGE**   
**07:45 PST**

“And we’re doing this really early because?” Chuck didn’t quite put a whine in his voice, though he came close. He would have been perfectly justified. It was Monday morning, his weekend had been a hellbender of repeatedly running into brick walls of computer security, and he had only half of his morning routine under his belt. It really was quite inconsiderate of Casey to just grab him in the middle of a Tai Chi routine and yank him into the gun range.

Casey made one of the more guttural noises in his arsenal.

Chuck pulled up short. “Oh, no, no,” he said when he saw the gun waiting on the shelf. 

“Yes,” Casey said, shoving him into the room and closing the door behind them.

Chuck crossed his arms over his chest, subconsciously hunching his shoulders forward to make himself a smaller target. “Seriously, can’t I just keep training on the Sig? I have a good feeling about the Sig. We’re almost friends—in fact, I feel like the Sig might accuse me of cheating if I shoot…that.”

“Relax.” Casey clapped him on the shoulder, but there was still a gleam in his eye that Chuck didn’t trust. “You won’t be shooting that.”

Chuck deflated in relief. “Whew.”

“You’re going to disassemble it. And reassemble it.”

Chuck stared at Casey, horror growing deep and stark in his chest. For several seconds, his mouth worked soundlessly, his jaw creaking. “You realize that she once threatened to chop off my fingers, and that was just because I borrowed her knives?” 

“She likes her knives.” Casey picked up the Smith & Wesson on the gun range shelf and checked the chamber. _Sarah’s_ Smith & Wesson. Casey nodded, pleased at the state of the chamber. He pressed the magazine release button and set the full magazine off to the side. “If she’s anything like me, she likes her guns more. My advice? Don’t screw up.”

“Gee, thanks for the swell advice, Casey.” Chuck felt a new ulcer join the first ever-present stomach pain. He took a deep breath. Casey had been teaching him, which meant that he did actually know how to disassemble and reassemble the gun…but he was very fond of his hands. He needed those to code, among other things. And Sarah would most definitely make sure he could do nothing of the sort if she found out what her partners were up to while she (hopefully) slept a few miles away. Chuck cast a desperate look at Casey now. “Why do you hate me?”

“We don’t have time for that. If you want to get this assignment done, I’d get started. Walker’ll be here any minute.”

“Oh, God,” Chuck said, sweat forming at the thought.

“One more thing.” Casey’s smirk broadened as he reached over and plucked something from the shelf. It unrolled itself to reveal a long length of cloth.

“A blindfold? You want me to wear a blind—are you kidding me? Seriously, Casey, are you kidding me right now? Because this is not nice. _Not_ ni—hey! Hey! What are you doing? Stop that!” Chuck battled uselessly at Casey as the other man wrapped the blindfold over the top half of his face. “Oh, God, I’m going to die. I can see it now. Some unlucky stranger is going to find my cut-up corpse in a dumpster off of Sepulveda, and it’s going to be your fault for what you’re doing right now and—ow! It’s tight enough already! Geez!”

“Should’ve brought a gag, too,” Casey muttered. Chuck heard him step away, but which direction, he had no idea. He felt pressure against his back, pushing him forward until his midsection bumped something. The shelf containing the Silver Monster, he assumed. Indeed, he lifted one hand to feel around and yelped as his fingers brushed a cold, smooth groove of metal. He tried to jump away, but Casey merely increased the pressure against his back. “Guess what your task is, numb-nuts.”

Chuck felt his stomach bottom out again. “You can’t seriously believe that I can disassemble and reassemble this gun blindfolded, Casey.”

“Believe it and expect it. And in three and a half minutes, too.”

Something beeped.

Chuck’s mouth dropped open. “Three and a half min—are you _insane_?”

“Three minutes and twenty five seconds,” Casey said.

“I can’t see anything!”

“You’ve done it enough that you should know it by touch. Get a move on. Three minutes and twenty seconds.”

“What if I do it wrong?”

“Walker kills you, my job here is done, and I get to go back to fighting terrorists in the Khyber Pass. Even though I don’t see the problem with that, move it. Three fourteen.”

“But if I can’t _see_ anything—”

He heard the aggravation in Casey’s sigh. “Sight is only one of the five senses, Bartowski. You’ve got a working set of hands there. Use ‘em.”

Chuck blinked against the blindfold. The cloth Casey had picked was so opaque that his eyes felt like they weren’t real. Hesitantly, he felt around for the gun again, only to yelp and try to leap backward in surprise when his fingers touched it.

Casey’s shove was a little less gentle this time.

“I’m sorry,” Chuck said. “I can’t do it. I don’t know how, and if I screw it up, Sarah’s going to _kill_ me, and it’s not right. Can’t I do this with the Sig? And my eyes? I’ve got 20/20 vision. It’s one of the greatest things about me—”

“Bartowski,” and Casey’s voice held plenty of the menace that had been missing of late, as he’d started to relax around Chuck, or at least it had seemed so before this little lesson in terror, “if you don’t get your ass in gear and disassemble the damned gun, Walker is going to be the least of your problems.”

Chuck’s hands started shaking.

“Three minutes,” Casey growled.

“Casey, I don’t think I—”

“I said field-strip the gun! That is an _order_ , soldier!”

Maybe it was the volume. Maybe it was the perfect drill instructor cadence. Either way, something inside Chuck’s head seemed to _click_. He jolted forward and his hands immediately leapt to the gun, fingers questing. A few quick movements, and he’d checked the chamber, suppressed the buttons on either side above the trigger. He pulled the slide back, squared the frame off on the shelf in front of him so that he would be able to find it again, popped the guide rod and spring out, pulled the barrel assembly loose, and set it on the shelf. One tap against the shelf edge to show that he was done. Pick up the slide. _Tap_. Put the barrel back in, _tap_ , fit the guide rod and spring. _Tap_. Select the frame, line up the slide. _Tap._ Put it back together.

Reach over.

Grab the magazine.

Slide it into place.

Chamber a round. Unhook the safety.

“Bartowski, what—”

Take aim.

“Are you—”

Fire.

Something exploded. Or at least that was what it sounded like. One moment, Chuck had been completely engrossed to the point of almost feeling outside himself, and then something punctured his concentration. He jerked backward, automatically clapping his hands over his ears in case the explosion came again.

Only to clobber himself in the head with the side of the gun.

“Ow!” Chuck reached up with his free hand to yank the blindfold down around his neck. “What the hell?”

Casey didn’t answer. He was too busy staring in shock at something along the gun range wall.

“Casey?” Chuck carefully set the gun down on the shelf—in addition to the fact that it was Sarah’s and dangerous because of it, he didn’t want to have to touch a gun for longer than he had to—and moved to wave a hand in front of Casey’s face. “What are you look—ack!”

Casey snatched his hand, twisted, and suddenly Chuck found himself pushed chest first into the gun range shelf, his arm pinned behind his back.

“What the _hell_ ,” Casey said, his voice deceptively quiet, “was _that_ , Bartowski?”

“What are you even talking about? Geez! Ow!”

With his free hand, Casey pushed on the back of Chuck’s head. He probably would have grabbed a handful of curls to manipulate the other man’s head, but Chuck had shaved it all off again the night before. Still, Casey managed to point his head toward the silhouette barely lit up along the far wall.

It bore a single bullet hole right through the heart.

Killshot.

“I said disassemble the gun. I said reassemble the gun. I did _not_ say fire the gun!”

“Sorry!” Chuck tried to squirm, but Casey knew his stuff when it came to pinning people. Chuck couldn’t move at all. “I don’t know what came over me! You—you just sounded like a drill instructor, that’s all, and it took me back, and I must have gotten carried away! I did go to Basic, remember?”

Casey stilled, apparently thinking. Sometimes it was best to let him mull things over, but right now, Chuck figured his best defense was the thing that usually led to trouble: diarrhea of the mouth. 

“And that shot? That shot’s not a big deal, it was a fluke, that’s all it was, I swear. It should’ve gone into the ceiling or something, but instead I got that guy’s heart, and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I’ll stay in complete control next time, I promise.”

Though he probably had enough verbal ammo to babble for years, Chuck was grateful when Casey finally sighed and loosened his grip, allowing Chuck to scramble away. The other man remained silent as he picked up the Smith & Wesson, checked the chamber, and pulled the magazine out. He set the unloaded gun on the shelf and gestured at it. “Prove it.”

“Wh-what?”

“Do it again. Prove to me that that shot was a fluke. Take the gun apart, put it together, and shoot. But keep the gun pointed at that wall, for all that is holy.” Casey handed over a set of ear protectors, donned a set himself, and crossed his arms over his chest.

Chuck swallowed and reached for the blindfold, but had so much trouble maneuvering it around the protectors that Casey scowled. “Just keep your eyes closed. Don’t peek.”

It was harder this time, maybe because his hands were still shaking from Casey’s attack and the surprise shot. Chuck squeezed his eyes shut the whole time as his fingers worked to field strip the gun and assemble it, carefully. There was still the fear of Sarah coming down on his head to contend with, after all. He slid the slide back into place, pushed the magazine in, took a deep breath. His hands shook even harder as he squared off in a shooting stance and pointed at the target. He took another deep breath, imagining the silhouette in his head though he didn’t have an ice cube’s chance on Arrakis in hitting it, counted to three.

The gun jerked. It seemed to recoil harder this time, vibrating up his arms in a way that made Chuck wince at how unprofessional it must look.

Slowly, fearing that he’d put a bullet into the ceiling, he opened first his left eye and then his right. Casey moved up to stand next to him. They stared at the silhouette.

Casey was the first one to break the silence. He clapped Chuck on the shoulder and let loose a belly laugh. “Turns out you _can_ hit the broad side of a barn, Bartowski. You just have to close your eyes to do it.” He slid magazine out and stuck it in his back pocket. “Clean that and get it back in Walker’s stash before she figures out it’s missing. Heh.”

With that, he left Chuck alone with the Silver Monster and the silhouette that bore two bullet holes. One in the heart, and one in the head. 

**31 JANUARY 2008**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS**   
**13:58 PST**

“Okay, something’s up,” Sarah said as she came into Chuck’s office.

Chuck dropped his pen and swiveled in his chair quickly. Too quickly. He nearly overbalanced and sent himself crashing to the floor. “Is it a mission? Do we have a mission? Is it something to do with the data we grabbed on Kohlmeier?”

“What? No.” Sarah’s eyebrows drew low over her eyes and she turned her head slightly, still watching him with her eyes, something she only did when she was suspicious of him. “I was going to say something’s up with Casey, but I don’t think that’s just the case anymore.”

Chuck hoped the fact that he had begun to sweat was obvious only to him. “Wh-why would you think that?”

Sarah merely folded her arms over her chest. It made Chuck look down, and notice that she was wearing the pink blouse again, the one he really liked. 

He forced his mind to focus by reminding himself that he was dating a lie-detector-trained-assassin. That usually helped. “So nothing new from the data I pulled off of those hard drives?”

Again, Sarah didn’t answer. She strode over to his desk and sat on the edge, so that she was looming over him. It was a little close, but it wasn’t quite to the level of impropriety between coworkers that would have to be explained away on the Castle security footage later. Even so, it hardly mattered. Chuck would have felt that quietly threatening stare on him even from ten feet away.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Uh, nothing.” Don’t think about her gun, don’t think about her gun, don’t think—

“Are you sure that’s what you want to say?”

Chuck reminded himself that they were still being watched by Castle’s security cameras, which was why they had been extra careful at work since they had returned to Burbank. Therefore, it would be messy to explain if Sarah suddenly put him in a sleeper hold.

Of course, he would have to leave Castle sometime.

“Something’s up with Casey, and now you’re edgy around me—well, edgier than normal—you won’t meet my eyes, and you’re starting to sweat.” Sarah ticked points off on her fingers. “Any one of those things alone would be suspicious, but add them up and…”

Chuck winced.

“So what is it?”

“It’s nothing, I swear. Everything’s fine.”

“Uh-huh. Not buying it.” Sarah poked him in the arm. “Out with it, Bartowski. Did you flash on something in my file again?”

Chuck blinked. “What exactly _is_ in your file if you’re so worried about me flashing on it?”

“I’m not sure what’s in my file,” Sarah said, frowning. “It’s been awhile since I had Dave hack the database and find out. But since you freaked out last time you flashed on me—”

“It was only for a little while! You looked really pissed off when you shot that security camera. I was scared.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. The incident had occurred on the day after Christmas, and Chuck figured Sarah was still a little upset about it. She had worn a ring, something he hadn’t seen her wear before, and something in the pattern of the ring had inspired a flash. If there was ever a time he didn’t need reminding that he was dating a cold-school ninja, it was while sitting next to her on the couch watching _The Exorcist_.

And he had since apologized for it multiple times.

“So what are you hiding from me?” Sarah asked, switching topics with the subtlety of a sledge hammer.

“Promise not to kill me?”

“Chuck…”

“Casey made me disassemble and reassemble your gun this morning before you got here.” The words tumbled out in a rush right as Chuck shoved his foot against the floor, sending his rolling desk chair backwards and out of Sarah’s reach. He hunched forward into the sitting form of The Morgan, remembering her face when she had given him the pocket knife and told him never to touch any of her knives again. “Please, if you’re going to cut off my fingers, do the left hand. I use the right hand for the Wii.”

“Chuck,” Sarah said, and there was laughter in her voice. “Don’t be absurd, I’m not going to cut off your fingers.”

“You’re not?” Chuck peeked through his fingers. “But I thought you said—”

“You didn’t damage it, did you?”

“Well, no, but…”

“I’ve got seven Smith & Wessons. I can always get another.”

Chuck lowered his hand entirely and blinked at her, sixty percent sure she wasn’t getting him to drop his guard so that she could attack. “Isn’t that a bit excessive?”

“Possibly. So how’d you do?”

“What?”

“With the disassembling. Casey didn’t mention the Gun Club Lessons had started up again.”

“Oh.” Chuck scooted his desk chair back to the actual desk, frowning. “Well, he blindfolded me. And then I made a killshot. Well, two killshots.”

Since he was looking at Sarah, he got to see the color drain out of her face as she stared at him. “What? Casey let you fire while blindfolded? Is he _insane_?”

“Well, the first time was kind of an…accident.”

“ _What_? What the hell is Casey doing giving you a loaded weapon while you’re blindfolded?” Sarah surged to her feet. “I’m going to go kick his—”

“Hey, whoa, wait a second!” Chuck sprang to his feet and lunged halfway across his own office to cut Sarah off at the door. There was a brief temptation to deploy The Morgan again thanks to the look on her face, but he stood his ground. “The gun wasn’t loaded when Casey gave it to me, I swear. I just…Casey sounded like a drill sergeant for a minute, and I flashed back to Basic Training. I assembled and disassembled the gun faster than anything Casey’s ever seen, he says. And then I chambered a round and fired it. That was all.”

Sarah’s face still hadn’t gained back any of its color. “And it was a killshot?”

“I know, weird, right? Casey couldn’t believe it. So he had me do it again, and it turns out that if I have my eyes closed, I’m an expert marksman.”

“Oh, _that’ll_ come in handy,” Sarah said, and her hands were shaking as she pushed them through her hair. “I can’t believe Casey let you anywhere near a live weapon while blindfolded.”

“The rounds were set off to the side and the safety was on the whole time.” Chuck frowned. “Well, it was until I switched it of—oof! You have _got_ to give me a warning when you do that!”

Sarah just squeezed him tighter. Cautious, Chuck removed his hands from the doorjambs and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m glad you didn’t shoot yourself in the foot,” Sarah muttered.

“As am I, though they’re big enough targets.”

“Well, you know what they say.”

Chuck’s face abruptly went red as Sarah stepped back, sending a furtive glance toward the security camera in the corner.

“How are we going to explain that one to Beckman and Graham?” Chuck asked, moving quickly away from the doorway and back into his office.

“They don’t comb all of the office footage,” Sarah said, but she sounded doubtful. “And coworkers hug, don’t they?”

“Why are you asking me? I don’t know.”

“You’ve held more normal jobs than I have.”

“And how many have you had?”

“Conman’s daughter, spy. That’s it.”

“Oh. Then I guess I have.” Chuck wrinkled his brow as he thought about it. “I guess coworkers could hug. We could tell them it was a birthday hug.”

“Whose birthday?”

“Uh, Morgan’s,” Chuck said, though it wasn’t for another week.

“Okay, that was a Morgan’s birthday hug.” 

“Sounds good to me.”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find Casey and kick his ass.”

“Wait!” Chuck blinked. “What for?”

“For letting you anywhere near a gun with a blindfold on.” Sarah’s tone said what her words didn’t: duh.

“Eh, how else would we have known about my lights-off expert marksmanship, then? You should let him live. I’m fond of the big guy.” Chuck looked over when his computer beeped and brought up his email program. “Oh, fun.”

“What is it?” 

“My data dump of the day.” Chuck double-clicked to open it out of habit more than curiosity. He turned to flash a grin at Sarah. “You know, as a coworker, I think it would be perfectly normal if you stayed awhile to keep me company while I sift through this.”

“Oh, it would, would it?” Sarah pulled over the spare desk chair. “I suppose I could take a break from the paperwork for a few minutes.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be distracting me so I don’t go kill Casey, would you?”

“Me? No. Is it too much to enjoy the pleasure of your company?”

“Uh-huh.” Sarah propped her feet up on the desk and folded her arms over her chest. “How long does it take you to get through these?”

Chuck was already scanning the first of the airline passenger lists. “Not too long unless there’s a lot of people in the—”

One name jumped out at him so much it practically glowed red. Chuck blinked mid-sentence and let the Intersect smack his brain around.

IVAN FYODOROV.

A shot of a wooden stairwell from below, tastefully lit at sunset.

EX-KGB, considered DANGEROUS. 

Suspected involvement in Commuter Train Bombings, Paris, France, 12 November 2002.

Surveillance footage of a burly man in a turtle neck and sports blazer talking on a cell phone outside a train station in Italy.

Suspected involvement in disappearance of CIA Operative White Rose. Last time on American soil: 13 January 1989, Chechen national.

A dossier, several lines redacted. A final shot of the same stairwell as before.

“—Intersect.” Chuck blinked again and shook his head a little to clear it. With a swipe of his hand across the control tablet for the computer system, he brought up the CIA database on another screen.

“Got a hit already?” Sarah asked, leaning forward a little in her interest.

“Ivan Fyo—Fio—”

“Fyodorov,” Sarah supplied. “Who is he?”

“He’s a piece of work. Ex-KGB, hasn’t been here since the eighties.”

“Any idea what he’s doing here now?”

Chuck shrugged. “None. He’s on a passenger list of a plane flying in this afternoon. And if he booked a car or hotel in L.A., it’ll be in the—oh, there we go.” He scooted his chair over to the new monitor, which displayed the database. “Oh, swanky. Our cold-war ex-spy and general baddie is staying at the Grand Saville. Very nice. Guess the black market pays well these days.”

“Go figure. Is he flagged?”

“Not officially.” Chuck input the name into his in-Castle database and added a case number before he tagged the car rental and hotel information to the file. “Think he’s connected to Krolik and Ezersky? They’re both Russian, after all.”

“Yes, because Russia is such a tiny country,” Sarah deadpanned.

“We’ve come across bigger coincidences,” Chuck said, turning back to the database. He clicked a few times.

“What are you doing?”

“Pulling up the Grand Saville’s guest list. Maybe Fyo—Ivan the Terrible over here was meeting somebody, and they might be in the Intersect.” Chuck bounced one shoulder up and down. “It’s a long shot, but—oh, crap, not again.”

A shot of an old, abandoned gas station.

DMITRY SILJAK.

CIA briefing, several lines blacked out. Pictures of what looked like a gun store of some type with semi-automatic and automatic weapons on shelves like merchandise at the dollar store. Surveillance of Siljak, well-armed and glaring at something out of the view of the camera.

ILLEGAL ARMS TRADE.

A military intelligence report.

The gas station again.

Chuck blinked and scrunched his face up for a second. Flashing twice in a row was never pleasant. “Well, there’s definitely another Russian at—oh, geez, what the hell?”

There were ten flashes, including Siljak and Fyodorov. By then, Chuck wanted to put his head down and moan. Russian and Eastern Bloc arms dealers, ex-KGB officers, and, his personal favorite, two freelance assassins.

“The Russians are having a douchebag convention and nobody invited us?” 

“Are you saying we’re douchebags?” Sarah asked as she kneaded his shoulders.

“Point.” He lifted his head to look back at her. “And what are you going to say when Beckman or Graham asks about this?”

Sarah gave a pert little shrug. “You’re the Intersect. This is all for your health, which comes first.”

“If you haven’t got your health, then you haven’t got anything,” Chuck said, running his hands over his face. He sat back in the chair and wearily clicked to the next page in the Grand Saville Database, afraid of what might be awaiting him. He scanned half of the list, mercifully, before the flash hit.

ILSA TRINCHINA.

A CIA dossier, TOP SECRET.

A shot of a beautiful woman of Eastern European descent.

SUGAR BEAR.

A letter, handwritten. _Sugar Bear, I have missed you today. I kept thinking of the security of your arms when you hold me, the wonderful flutter in the pit of my stomach…_ It was signed with a kiss and _Love, Ilsa_. 

A map of Chechnya, with the words SUGAR BEAR once again flashing over it.

Surveillance of Ilsa Trinchina making out with a man— _Casey_? Ilsa making out with Casey in what looked like a fancy hotel lobby…with plenty of tongue. 

The same shot of the sunlit stairwell from the other flashes Chuck had seen.

Chuck’s back hit the chair, nearly crushing Sarah’s hand between his shoulder blade and the seatback. And then he began to shake.

Sarah was instantly on her guard. “Chuck? Chuck, what is it? Is it the Intersect? I’ll call Ellie—”

“No, no, wait,” Chuck said, and an actual snort escaped as he continued to giggle. Even though he wanted brain bleach to forever wipe the memory of Casey macking on an Eastern European national, Chuck couldn’t help it. The laughter just flowed out until he was bent forward at the waist, gasping as he laughed.

After a few seconds, Sarah sank back into the other chair. She reached over and handed Chuck a tissue for his eyes, which had begun to stream due to the laughter. “Feel like sharing the joke, Chuckles?”

“Casey’s got a girlfriend!” Chuck knew he was acting like a middle-schooler, but: “She calls him Sugar Bear!”

“ _What_?”

“I know, I always thought he was like a Ken doll downstairs, but apparently he’s got a romantic history.” Between fits of laughter, Chuck managed to fill Sarah in on the contents of his latest flash, describing the hotel lobby make-out in a great deal more detail than necessary. If he had to live with those images for the rest of his life, it seemed only fair that Sarah should share a portion of his pain.

“We need to look her up immediately,” he said. “The Intersect’s got, like, nothing on her. I want to see what kind of woman would win the heart of a man who communicates better with wolves and wolverines than most humans.”

“He _does_ growl a lot,” Sarah said, “but I’m not sure that justifies reallocating CIA resources, going behind Casey’s back, and violating this woman’s privacy.”

Chuck just looked at her. “Feel better now that you got common sense out of the way?”

“Much. Let’s look her up.” Sarah slid over to grab the second keyboard and access the second set of monitors in Chuck’s office. It only took a few strokes to pull up the CIA database. “Ilsa…Trinchina, right?”

“Right.”

“Ooh, she’s pretty.”

“You say that like you’re surprised,” Chuck said. He checked over his shoulder to make sure Casey had not sneaked into the room. “I mean, he may not be my type, but you have to admit that the man is handsome.”

“Mm-hmm,” Sarah said. “Hm, doesn’t say much here. Name, birth date, she’s got a college education. Photographer.” She pulled up a few pictures and a swipe of the hand sent them spinning over all of the monitors. “She’s got a decent eye. Use of negative space could use some work.”

“Could it now?” Chuck blinked.

“What? Don’t look at me like that,” Sarah said, hunching her shoulders. “I took photography as an elective in college. I thought it would help to have a better eye for detail, and I picked up a thing or two along the way.”

“So many hidden pockets.”

“Looks like she and Casey were both in Chechnya, your flash backs that up. Casey was there posing as an energy consultant and…” Sarah’s voice trailed off.

“What? What is it?”

“Ilsa Trinchina was killed in a bombing in Groznyy in 2004.” 

“What?” Chuck sat up straighter despite his still-aching head. He immediately began typing. “That doesn’t make any sense, she checked in at the Grand Saville last night.”

“I have her death certificate here, Chuck. And Casey’s reports of her death, actually, if he’s the NSA undercover agent whose name has been redacted from this file.”

“Then who’s at the Grand Saville?”

Sarah shrugged. “Probably somebody traveling on a stolen passport. It happens all the time in Russia; people die and their personal info gets recycled.”

“Oh.” Chuck’s stomach sank. All of the excitement that Casey had been human, that he had had a relationship and a human side, faded to sadness and sympathy. Casey had looked genuinely happy in those surveillance pictures, and to have lost the woman he loved in a bombing…Chuck didn’t look at Sarah. They’d only been dating a month and a half, and he couldn’t imagine even a tenth of what Casey must be feeling.

“So should we tell Casey about this?” he asked.

Sarah was silent for a moment, and he could tell she was considering all of the angles. “He’s a big boy, Chuck, he’ll be okay. And if there’s a concentration of Russian and ex-Cold War scumbags on American soil, Graham and Beckman need to be notified. Go ahead and finish your report, and I’ll brief the others while you see Dr. Anton.”

“What?” Chuck looked at his watch. “Oh, crap, I’m going to be late unless I leave right now.”

“I recommend hurrying, then. I’m going to go up and finish some paperwork.” Sarah rubbed her hand over Chuck’s shoulder on her way out, but he could see the same sympathy in her eyes that he felt.

**31 JANUARY 2008**   
**DR. ANTON’S OFFICE**   
**15:42 PST**

“And, if you don’t mind me asking, how are the nightmares? Are they still occurring?” 

“Hmm?” Chuck looked up from where he had been staring at his hands, not really seeing them. He was remembering the happiness on Casey’s face from the flash, if he was going to be honest with himself. He wasn’t used to that sort of emotion connected to _Casey_. The man lived the ultimate bachelor life. He had his work, his cigars, his gun club buddies, and now his video games thanks to the fact that Chuck had bought him a subscription to X-Box Live Gold for Christmas. 

“The nightmares?” Dr. Anton wore a gray sweater today. He looked as pleasant and mild-mannered as ever. “You had mentioned recurring nightmares about the man you call Leader?”

“Oh, right.” Chuck wanted to shudder. A couple of weeks and a long discussion with Sarah had helped him cope, somewhat, with the fact that the knife he had thrown had nearly killed Leader. It still gave him a bad moment or two, though and never when he expected it to. He’d had a flashback to the lobby of the Heartbrake Hotel while running out to pick up milk for his cereal a few nights before, and once waiting in line at the movies with Morgan. 

In his latest nightmare, Sarah hadn’t shown up in time. Leader had bled out from the knife wound. He hadn’t stopped until his blood covered the disgusting shag carpet, and Chuck was up to his ankles in it.

And Fidget, the doomed safe-cracker, had been there with the guard that Bryce had shot in the warehouse. They had been sipping tea while the blood had risen, completely unaffected.

Chuck had woken up gasping.

“No,” he said now. “I haven’t had that nightmare this week.” Yet.

“And what have your dreams been like, then?”

Chuck fidgeted uncomfortably. “You’re getting into dream analysis now, Doc?”

“I find that at times the subconscious can speak quite clearly through our dreams, yes.”

Chuck felt a desire to ask him to analyze the dream he’d had about playing Pooh Sticks with Master Chief, then. Master Chief had won. Of course, that was the tamest dream he could remember from the past few weeks. The rest were just a little…R-rated. Well, far beyond that. He imagined Sarah wouldn’t mind, as she always seemed pleased whenever he noticed her in any physical capacity, but he didn’t exactly want to relate to Dr. Anton exactly how much Sarah hadn’t been wearing in his latest dream.

“Maybe,” Chuck said. “But I don’t really want to talk about that, if that’s okay with you.”

“It’s perfectly fine by me, Chuck. We can talk about whatever you wish to talk about, you know that.”

“I know that.”

“Perhaps you might feel like discussing what is on your mind?” 

“Say what?” Chuck asked, looking up quickly. “I don’t have anything on my mind.”

Dr. Anton took his glasses off to give Chuck a patient look. “Maybe so, but pardon me for the observation that you seem especially distracted today.”

“I do?”

Dr. Anton raised a brow. It had taken a few weeks of therapy for Chuck to establish any rapport with him, and he still felt uncomfortable around the psychiatrist, but he had to appreciate Dr. Anton’s forwardness. It wasn’t Casey’s tactlessness or Sarah’s forthrightness, but the psychiatrist did have a habit of calling it like he saw it.

“I stumbled across some intel at work today,” he said. “It’s partially classified, but I did find out something that…”

“What was it about? Or can you say?”

“It was about Case,” Chuck said, using Casey’s code-name for Anton, though he was positive he had slipped several times and referred to the man by his full last name. “More specifically, about a woman he…loved.”

“You seem surprised.”

“I am. I never really thought of Case as the, ah, amorous type.” And now, thanks to the Intersect’s memory retention abilities, Chuck would never be able to think of Casey any other way. He pushed past that right now, though. “But I guess it makes sense, wouldn’t it? I mean, he’s not a robot. He had a life before I met him.”

“He hasn’t spoken to you about that life?”

“Not in specific terms.” He’d mentioned things like the Khyber Pass, and other things that had spoken of being a career soldier. But like Sarah, Casey hadn’t mentioned any family, any connections. Chuck had simply begun to assume he had been hatched or perhaps assembled at something like a real life G.I. Joe factory.

“So you don’t know what happened with this woman?” Dr. Anton asked.

“She died in a bombing in Chechnya, almost four years ago.” Chuck twisted his left thumb around with his right hand. “Case was there with her, since he was stationed there at the time. I can’t say what he was doing.”

“Understood.”

“But I can’t help but think that, wow, that happened to him. He fell in love with somebody, and he lost her.” Chuck’s frown deepened. “I lost everybody in my life for five years. Sometimes I have a hard time with that, thinking about everything I missed, or when my sister mentions something that happened in that time that I should know about but I don’t. I’ve been handling it okay, though, you know? And five years…five years is nothing compared to gone forever.”

“Unfortunately, loss is part of life, Chuck,” Dr. Anton said, his voice gentle.

“Only two things are assured in life, right? Death and taxes,” Chuck said, forcing a smile onto his face. “I guess I should be used to that by now. Or I need to get used to it.”

“Why do you feel you need to get used to loss?”

“I work with life and death situations, don’t I? My partners carry guns and I’m now licensed to carry a concealed weapon all over the country, which means my bosses are going to expect me to start carrying a gun soon.” Technically, he’d been licensed for over a month, but until he received Casey’s Gun Club membership card, he wasn’t going to shake that particular beehive.

Or ever, if he could help it.

“That’s a very fatalistic approach,” Dr. Anton said.

Chuck moved a shoulder in something approaching a shrug. “Is it fatalistic or simply realistic? We face armed foes a lot and it’s too much to expect that every single one of them graduated from the Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what that means.” Dr. Anton fiddled with his glasses as he wrote something on his legal pad.

“Bad shots, Doc. It means they couldn’t even hit the Death Star, even from a hundred feet away.” When Dr. Anton still looked puzzled, Chuck cleared his throat. “It’s a space station the size of a small moon.”

“Ah.”

“And I hate the thought of the bunker so much that sometimes I can’t sleep,” Chuck went on, deciding that the man’s lack of _Star Wars_ knowledge wasn’t even the worst thing about the doctor, so there wasn’t any point in attempting to educate him. “Seriously. My hands start shaking if I think about even losing so much as six months the way I lost all of those years. And if five years is nothing compared to forever, six months is really nothing. But it happened to Case. It could happen to me, too. It just takes one bad guy with too-good aim, and maybe she’s having an off-day, and she’s gone forever.”

“She?”

Chuck’s head snapped up. “Or Case,” he said quickly. “It’s far more likely when you think about it—sorry, Case, please don’t kill me—because, you know, him being so brawny that he’s a bigger target. Sarah’s tall but the woman has, like, no body fat. She was probably a skinny kid, don’t you think? God, I was a skinny kid. I was like a twig with curls.”

Dr. Anton was silent for a moment, simply watching Chuck in a way that made the taller man want to keep babbling. Chuck just twisted his thumb harder. He’d made a pact with himself after talking to Sarah in the guest house in DC, when he had made grilled cheese for them both, not to let Anton know about his relationship. The government didn’t need to know about his love life, or Sarah’s, and that included a government-paid psychologist. It was probably stunting his psychological and emotional growth to keep his feelings for Sarah to himself, but he frankly didn’t give a damn.

However, that didn’t help much when he slipped up like he just had.

“Mm-hmm,” Dr. Anton finally said. Thankfully, he didn’t scribble a note on the legal pad. Chuck nearly sagged back with relief, but self preservation kept him upright. “Well, Chuck, can I give you some advice?”

Chuck bit his tongue over a question very much like, “Isn’t that your job?” Instead, he just nodded.

“You can’t borrow trouble.”

Chuck waited, but the psychiatrist had finished. “That’s it?” Chuck asked, just to be sure.

“How fulfilling a life do you think you will lead if you spend every second of it preparing for the worst to happen?”

“But shouldn’t you be prepared? Especially because of the aforementioned bad guys with guns?”

“There’s a difference between being pessimistic and being prepared, Chuck.” Dr. Anton adjusted his glasses once more. “Yes, you are in a line of work that could lead to fatalities and casualties. So an amount of caution is warranted, certainly, but not to the detriment of your everyday life.”

“And where would you say the line is?”

“That’s for you to determine.”

Chuck scowled. “You couldn’t have given me a definitive answer to that one?”

To his surprise, Dr. Anton smiled. “I know, it’s a pain in the ass, isn’t it? Unfortunately, we’ll have to continue this on Thursday, as your time for today is up. Perhaps, if he’s amenable, you could try talking to Major Case about his lost love. He may say some things that surprise you. Or he could simply use a friend.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks, Doc.” Chuck shook Dr. Anton’s hand and let himself out, nodding politely to the receptionist as he always did. Because he had driven himself over, neither Casey nor Sarah was waiting for him in the waiting room, and it felt strange to simply walk out the front doors and into the late afternoon sunlight.

Of course, he’d thought that too soon, Chuck thought. There was a large black van parked in the parking lot, with Casey in the driver’s seat. Sarah was waiting on the hood.

“How’d the appointment go?” she asked as Chuck approached.

“Oh, you know, same old, same old. I depressed Dr. Anton and he gave me somewhat helpful advice.” Chuck climbed into the van before Sarah could, willingly taking the middle seat. “What’s up? We got a mission?”

“At the Grand Saville,” Casey said.

Chuck gave him a cautious look. “Oh. Are you, uh, are you okay, Casey?”

“I’m fine. Don’t ask me again.”

“Got it.”

“We brought a change of clothes for you, in the back,” Sarah said, climbing in behind Chuck and closing the door. “And we’ll explain on the way.”


	45. Red Day Dawning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher…or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. — _Douglas Adams_

**31 JANUARY 2008**   
**GRAND SAVILLE HOTEL PARKING LOT**   
**17:23 PST**

Chuck fussed with the cuffs of the tuxedo jacket for the fifteenth time. “You know, there are times when the government astounds me.”

“Yeah?” Sarah checked her makeup and set the compact in her kit.

“I mean, look at this.” Chuck spread his arms to encompass the whole suit.

“What? It looks nice.”

“I mean, the government can get me a fitted tuxedo at any time of the day, with almost no notice. Two hours ago, that would never have occurred to me.”

“Connections,” Casey said, slamming open the back door of the van and climbing inside with them. Unlike Chuck and Sarah, he wore nondescript clothing, as he would be hanging around the lobby while the others crashed the private party at the bar. Chuck had spent the entire car ride over from Dr. Anton’s trying to discern if Casey’s anger had anything to do with the fact that somebody was in the country illegally with his dead lover’s credentials, or if it was the normal brand of Casey anger. He couldn’t tell, though Casey certainly seemed grumpier than usual. Indeed, the NSA agent frowned now. “Are you girls ready? The party started half an hour ago.”

“Relax, Casey. One of the principles of crashing is you never show up on time.” Sarah folded up her makeup kit and stowed it on the shelf in the back of the van.

“Yeah, Case, haven’t you ever crashed before?” Chuck asked as he squeezed by the other man. He told himself that the subsonic growl he received in reply didn’t make him move any faster.

The late afternoon sunlight made him blink as he climbed from the van. The other two followed him, but before Chuck could head for the front doors of the hotel, Casey stopped him. “You remember what we talked about?”

“Go in, don’t attract attention, gather as much information as we can about why this group is on American soil, and get out. Don’t start any international incidents. Don’t overeat on the canapés. Do let you know if there’s any trouble.”

“Good.”

“You know, Sarah’s going to be right there with me, and she’s done this before,” Chuck felt the need to point out.

“Oh yeah, because there’s no chance the two of you will get separated,” Casey said, and rolled his eyes. “And what was the most important thing?”

“Casey, don’t worry, I’m not going to attract attention to myself.”

**31 JANUARY 2008**   
**GRAND SAVILLE BAR (SURROUNDED BY RUSSIANS)**   
**17:32 PST**

The portly Russian dancing in the middle of the group took one look at Chuck. “Sascha!”

Chuck didn’t even have time to blink before the man latched onto both of his arms. Some part of his mind registered that Sarah swiftly stole the tray of drinks from his arm—they had been forced to pose as waiters, as the dress code was most definitely not black tie—but most of him was frozen in shock, staring in terror at the man who had grabbed his arms. “Is that you, my sweet Sascha?”

There went his promise to Casey about not attracting attention to himself. Chuck froze, but it hardly seemed to matter. The Russian—who did not inspire a flash now, though Chuck knew he was Grigory Keylov, arms dealer—simply hauled on his arm, yanking him right into the middle of a large crowd of other Russians. “Everybody, meet fourth cousin on my mother’s side! I haven’t seen you in forever! Big hug!”

And he lifted Chuck right off his feet in a spine-cracking hug.

Evidently the response to finding long-lost family members was to dance, and to dance vigorously. Chuck found himself yanked right into the middle of a circle of dancing Russians, all of whom were smiling and not anywhere near sober. From the looks of it, and the sheer amount of vodka wheeling around the party on the waiters’ trays, sober was something they hadn’t seen in a few hours. His best hope was to hop around awkwardly in the circle, an arm around a stranger’s shoulder and his other arm around Grigory’s shoulders. He tried his hardest not to think that he was touching complete strangers, let alone dancing with them. He also tried his hardest not to break out of the circle and run screaming from the room. So instead, he babbled.

“Yeah, we’re dancing,” he said, not sure if his voice was audible or if it was just him. At least Sarah didn’t seem to be moving far off; she was just on the other side of the dancers, watching him with an expression somewhere between concern and amusement. Chuck continued to hop around, praying that it looked less like a tall, gangly guy with too-long limbs having an epileptic fit and more like dancing. “This isn’t crazy at all, just dancing amid a group of Russian baddies who think I’m someone else entirely, and hell, to make things even better, I don’t speak a word of Russian. This is going swell. Don’t draw attention to yourself, Casey says. Don’t cause an international incident, Casey says. Well, good work, Bartowski! Two minutes inside, and you’ve already done both!”

Grigory, dancing next to him and still tipsy with glee and drink, looked over. “Is there problem, sweet Sascha?”

“No, no problem,” Chuck said quickly, raising his voice. “You, uh, you ever see ‘White Nights?’ Baryshnikov and Hines, dancing their way to fr—” He broke off abruptly because he had spotted something out of the corner of his eye. Curious, he turned, looking past Sarah and Russians on various pieces of furniture, all tossing back vodka and in deep conversation with each other. Something about the woman seated on one of the bar’s sofas seemed familiar.

The flash was only a small one this time.

The stairwell from his flashes earlier that day. 

SUGAR BEAR.

A shot of Ilsa Trinchina, quickly followed by a flash of her letter to Casey, as if Chuck would ever forget that. No amount of brain bleach existed that would enable him to do so.

The stairwell again.

Chuck jolted.

What the _hell_? Hadn’t Sarah said that Ilsa was dead? If so, she looked really, really great for a reanimated corpse. He tried to signal to Sarah, to get her to look over her shoulder and see Ilsa.

Grigory misread his signal. “He wants the blonde!” he shouted, and Chuck was jerked back to the present, where he was currently dancing in a circle with a bunch of Russian thugs and arms dealers. “Sascha wants the blonde!”

“Wh-what?” Chuck looked around in a panic, but the circle of dancers was already breaking up, two of the men going over to pull Sarah back. Given Sarah’s nature, Chuck half-expected her to whip out some muay thai and drop them on the spot, but she allowed herself to be hauled into the circle, right next to Chuck. He almost wanted to say something about treating women like an object, and how that was wrong. Casey’s threats about not drawing attention came back to him.

“What’s up?” Sarah asked, apparently unfazed by being yanked into a circle and forced to dance among a bunch of bad guys and villains. Chuck wondered what sort of CIA training they had that allowed one to get used to these kinds of circumstances. “Something the matter?”

“So Casey’s girlfriend is here,” Chuck said.

“What?”

“Yeah, turns out she’s less crispy than originally thought.” Chuck jerked his head over toward the sofa. Sarah’s steps barely faltered when she spotted Ilsa, but she did tense up. “What do we do?”

“Not sure, but I think we need to get out of here and figure out what’s really going on.” Sarah lifted her watch to her lips. “Casey, we’re compromised. We need extraction.”

“On it,” Casey said through their earpieces. Chuck and Sarah exchanged a look, but didn’t dare speak again in the middle of the dancing. Chuck could see Sarah seeking a way out of their current situation. He craned his neck, searching for Casey, hoping to somehow warn the other man, but he didn’t see the NSA agent in time. Casey came in through the back entrance—and headed straight toward Ilsa.

“Uh-oh,” Chuck said. “Maybe we should warn—nope, never mind, he’s found her. Uh, let’s hope it’s a happy reunion.”

“Well, she hasn’t slapped him,” Sarah said, turning in a circle next to Chuck.

“Why would she slap him?”

“I don’t know. But I would consider a slap a sign of a not-happy reunion.”

“Point.”

It was downright impossible to read the lips of the two across the room, thanks to the distance, the dancing, and the fact that he had never been trained to read lips. Casey’s back was mostly to them, and Chuck imagined that his shoulders were tensed, but he couldn’t tell. Ilsa, who really was quite pretty, certainly seemed to look troubled and surprised, but Chuck had no idea what that meant. How on earth was she here, he wondered, when she was supposed to be long-dead from a bombing?

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns, in all the world,” he murmured to Sarah, “and she walks into mine?”

“I know what you mean,” Sarah said. They twirled again. “You can’t see what they’re saying, can you?”

Chuck shook his head. Around them, the dancing slowly stopped as the music faded out. Chuck and Sarah clapped politely with the others, and Chuck had to fight his every being not to tense up when one Russian after the next grabbed his shoulders and shook him gently, in a familial way. Grigory took two shots of vodka from the very tray Sarah had been toting around the party and shoved them at the CIA Agents. “For toast!” he said, pointing at the stage.

Chuck followed his maybe-fourth-cousin’s finger to the stage, where a man in well-tailored, expensive clothing, had just picked up the microphone. Chuck only had enough time to think that the man kind of resembled a Baldwin brother before the flash hit.

VICTOR FEDEROV.

An abandoned gas station, dusty with age and disuse.

Photographs of a bomb, superimposed over an oil pipeline.

TOP SECRET CIA DOSSIER.

A flowchart of a Russian Organized Crime Group and Structure.

CIA Docket, Classified, Case Number: 045TY.

Shot of an abandoned gas station.

“Uh, Sarah?” Chuck said before the man could start talking. “I figured out what brought all of the baddies together.”

She eyed the man on the stage, who was making his opening remarks in a heavy accent, swaying a little from the drink. “Who is he?”

“Victor Federov. He’s a Russian oligarch with ties to everything from the mob to a plot to overthrow parliament.”

“Sounds like a real sweetheart,” Sarah muttered. “Whatever they’re doing here, it must be something sinister.”

“Thank you all for coming,” Victor Federov went on, slurring a little. “I know it wasn’t easy for everybody to get out to L.A.” He pronounced it like “Hail A,” and raised his drink. “But you should know I am very, very grateful. For this, I’d like to introduce to you a woman who makes me the happiest man on earth by agreeing to become my wife!”

A spotlight swept over the dance floor and bar. Chuck wheeled about to follow its progress, freezing when it landed on Casey—and the woman standing in front of him. To his horror, the spotlight then followed that woman to the stage, and Victor Federov finished, “Ilsa Trinchina!”

Chuck looked up at the smiling mien of Casey’s not-so-dead ex-girlfriend and said the only thing that came to mind: “Well, _that_ blows.”

**31 JANUARY 2008**   
**EN ROUTE TO CASTLE**   
**19:12 PST**

Chuck reached forward to fiddle with the radio, only to have Casey slap his hand away. “Don’t. I like this song.”

“It’s Neil Diamond,” Chuck said, wrinkling his nose. He quickly shrank back against the seat at the look Casey gave him. “Okay, so you’re a Diamondhead. Noted.”

To Chuck’s right, a slim arm reached out and twisted the volume knob on the radio. Casey added a growl to his glare, but Sarah only lifted an eyebrow as she said, into her phone, “Yes, General. I’m glad I was able to reach you. This is Agent Walker. I’ve got a sitrep for you. Sure, I’ll hold.” She covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Sorry, Casey.”

Casey shrugged.

They weren’t precisely walking on eggshells, Chuck thought, but things had been a lot quieter as they had slipped away from the party. As for Casey, it was hard to tell the difference, but Chuck was pretty sure that the regular stony countenance had hardened even further, and the man was quieter than usual. He also maintained what looked like a death grip on the wheel of the van, but that could have just been L.A. traffic. For himself, Chuck knew that he was also quiet, but he didn’t know quite how to broach the topic of an ex not only coming back to life, but marrying a Russian gangster.

Emily Post, he thought, really should have written a book about it. Maybe Dr. Phil would have something to say.

“Yes, General, I’m still here,” Sarah said to his right, startling him a little. “We’ve left the party at the Grand Saville, and our mission there was a success. Yes, we identified why there’s so much Russian black market activity.”

She paused, listening to whatever it was General Beckman had to say, no doubt. “Yes, ma’am. His name is Victor Federov. Ch—Agent Bartowski flashed on him, and the man outright admitted to being the reason that the crowd had gathered. No, no, we didn’t interrogate him or even engage him. He gave a speech. The party was to celebrate his upcoming wedding, which is why they’re all here.”

Chuck glanced sidelong at Casey. Casey kept his eyes on the road.

“Yes, that’s where it gets a bit tangled. The fiancée in question is Ilsa Trinchina.” Now, Sarah looked around Chuck, sneaking a quick peek at Casey. Again, the NSA agent kept his eyes forward. “Trinchina has a history with Major Casey, which could cause complications with Federov. Yes, ma’am, Trinchina knows that Casey is in the area. They, ah, happened to see each other at the party. Purely an accident. No, we don’t think Trinchina will mention it to Federov. Why not? Ah…”

She looked at Chuck for just a split-second, and he shrugged back.

“A hunch, ma’am,” Sarah said. She was quiet for half a minute, listening to whatever it was the General had to say. “Very well, understood. Perhaps, given Casey’s history with Trinchina, is it possible to, say, outsource this surveillance? One of the teams Major Casey or myself have been working with should be happy to cover this, as we’ve led them to several sizable busts. Yes, we’ll see right to it.” She pulled the cell phone away from her face and hit “End Call.” 

“And how is the General?” Chuck asked, clearing his throat in a desperate attempt to remove some of the ensuing awkward silence from the van.

“I think she might have been having drinks with the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Sarah said.

“Really?”

“Couldn’t be sure, but I think so. Anyway, I’m going to make a few calls and get Agent Keynes or Agent Bateman on setting up surveillance on the Russians, which means I’ll need to fake a warrant when we get back to Castle. Beckman wants us to monitor only, but with…” Sarah leaned forward a little to look around Chuck again, and Chuck turned his head accordingly so they were both eyeing Casey. “Ilsa being there, Prometheus needs to keep its distance.”

“Don’t worry, Walker, I’m not going anywhere near the Grand Saville again,” Casey said, cutting over into the next lane with what Chuck felt was quite a bit more violence than necessary, even for L.A. traffic.

Sarah gave Chuck a pointed look. He swallowed hard and looked from one partner’s stormy face to the other’s expectant one. “No need to worry here either,” he said, holding up both hands for peace. “Fourth-cousin-on-mother’s-side Sascha is staying out of this one.”

“Good. I’d better make those—” Sarah broke off as Chuck’s cell phone, not hers, buzzed out the _Cheers_ theme song. “Calls. Who is it?”

“Captain Awesome, of course. Who else would have such an awesome ringtone?” Chuck pressed “Talk” and cleared his throat. “Hey, Devon. How’s it going?”

**31 JANUARY 2008**   
**THE STAGGER INN**   
**20:17 PST**

Despite the sign above the door, Chuck was tempted to reach into his pocket, pull out his phone, and double-check the address Devon had texted to him earlier. He would have expected an establishment like The Stagger Inn to be a dark, smoky pub, done in deep browns and greens and with the heads of recent kills mounted on the walls and some guy named Bubba quietly sipping a 40 in the corner. Apparently, the Stagger Inn liked to thumb its nose at stereotypes and preconceptions, as it was sleek, clean, and lit up with blue neon. There wasn’t a dead deer to be found.

There was, however, Devon. He looked up from his spot at the bar, which was pretty empty, given that it was a Thursday night, and waved Chuck over. Like half of the other occupants of the bar, he still wore his scrubs, though no white lab coat. He was nursing what looked like regular tonic water.

“Glad you could make it,” he said when Chuck dumped his messenger bag on an empty stool and sat down next to him. “Sorry for calling you so last minute. Had a surgery cancel, but I needed to stick close to the hospital, so…”

“No problem. After the day I’ve had, I could really use a beer.”

“Any preference?”

“I’m good with whatever, really. I’m not picky.”

Devon nodded and flagged the bartender to get his attention. “Chris, my usual for him?”

A Stella Artois appeared with frightening speed in front of Chuck. “How do you _do_ that?” Chuck asked, his eyebrows shooting into his hairline. Back at Stanford, it had always taken him at least five minutes minimum to get the attention of any bartender, even if the bar was empty save for him. It was the male Bartowski curse.

“Do what?”

“Never mind. I guess it has to do with the ridiculous bubble of handsomeness or something.” Though Devon looked confused, Chuck took a sip of his beer before he explained. “It’s what Morgan used to call your phenomenal cosmic powers.”

“Ah, awesome.”

“Indeed. To being awesome?” Chuck asked, lifting his beer.

“Indeed,” Captain Awesome echoed. “I’m going to guess the lack of a page or a text means nobody was injured at…wherever it was you were tonight. Seriously, are you like a waiter or something?”

Chuck looked down at the remnants of his tuxedo. “No, I’m the fourth cousin of somebody named Grigory.”

“Say what?”

“It’s a Russian thing,” Chuck said. 

“You’re a Russian waiter?” 

Chuck paused. “Sure,” he said. “I’m a Russian waiter.”

Devon smiled and took a drink of his tonic water. “Life has definitely gotten more interesting since you came back. Which is kind of why I wanted to talk to you tonight. That, and it’s about Ellie.”

“What?” Chuck jerked upright on the barstool. “Ellie? Is she okay? Did something happen? Fulcrum—”

“Whoa, whoa, take it easy, buddy.” Devon laughed and patted his shoulder. “It’s nothing like that. Hell, it’s not really anything to do with,” he looked around the bar and lowered his voice, “the government, you know? I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh. Okay.” Chuck felt his heart slow back down to a gallop as the panic receded. “What’s up?”

“I’ve been doing some thinking lately. Ever since we had to go to DC and we weren’t sure if we were coming back to SoCal.” For the briefest of instants, Devon looked as broody as it was possible for him to look. “It got me thinking about what’s important in my life, you know?”

Despite himself, Chuck thought of what had preceded DC: his realizations about Sarah and Jill. And, of course, the bloody mess that had followed. He took a healthy swallow of beer. “I know what you mean.”

“Don’t take this wrong way, as it wasn’t your fault, but when you left, dude, Ellie…she didn’t handle it well.”

Chuck felt a twist of guilt squeeze his stomach to pulp.

“And maybe I didn’t handle it as well as I should have,” Devon continued, all of the perpetual optimism gone from his voice. “I could have done more. I should have.”

“Devon—”

“It’s a long story, but we broke up,” Devon said, holding up a hand to tell Chuck to wait. “Quite a few times. I know Ellie’s probably told you a little about what happened after you left, but I want you to hear it from me, too. I’m the one that screwed up. I should have been more supportive, more something.”

“Devon,” Chuck said, more forcefully. The guilt continued to writhe and flicker through him like a living thing. It hadn’t been his fault that he had been gone, like Devon said, but that didn’t stop the guilt at all. “I’m sure you did everything you could. You’re Captain Awesome. To be anything less than awesome is not in your genetic makeup.”

“Thanks for the support, bro, but it was not awesome. It’s over and done now, and Ellie and I are in a good place again, but you need to know that I wasn’t the best I could be for her.”

It took a few seconds before Chuck could speak. He was usually on the other end of this type of conversation these days. It felt odd. “Devon, it doesn’t matter.”

“It does. I was way too focused on my career.”

Chuck blinked at him. “The same one you dropped without any qualms for my sister when we had to go to DC, possibly permanently?” He tried to raise an eyebrow, but Sarah was so much better at that move than him. “It doesn’t matter. Even before I came back, you were there. You were around.”

“I should have been around _more_.”

“But you’re around now,” Chuck said, puzzled. It was his turn to hold up his hand to stop Devon. “Look, I love my sister more than anything else in the world, but I know her. She’s a Bartowski. We have,” and he had to think about it for a minute, “stubbornness issues. Of course, Ellie’s way worse than me.”

“Uh-huh,” Devon said in a tone that told Chuck he didn’t believe the other man for one second. 

“And she can’t have made it easy for you, either. Our parents abandoned us, and then I went missing and dealing with all of that plus medical school and becoming an awesome surgeon, I mean, holy hell, I should buy you a better drink than whatever it is you’re drinking.”

“Still on call, bro.”

“Even so. You’re still here.” 

“Of course I am.” In a switch, Devon looked almost affronted. “I love her. I’m not going anywhere.” He caught Chuck’s look and amended, “Unless she kicks me out and means it. I won’t resort to stalking, I swear.”

“Then we’re good,” Chuck said, and lifted his beer to polish it off. He paused with the bottle halfway to his lips when obvious relief covered Devon’s features. “Are you okay?”

Devon turned back to his drink. “Man,” he said, “this is harder than I thought.”

“Seriously, you’re starting to worry me.”

“I really wasn’t expecting this to be that difficult. The thing is, you’re the man in Ellie’s family.” Devon turned toward Chuck now, suddenly enough that Chuck jerked back half an inch on the stool. The doctor didn’t appear to notice, since he was digging in the pocket of his scrubs. “So you’d be the one I ask in this situation, but I think it would be that way even if you weren’t the only one I could ask. So can I?”

“Can you what?” Chuck’s eyes widened when he saw what Devon held out to him. “Uh, wow.”

“Can I marry Ellie?” Devon opened the box.

Chuck had to blink; he was pretty sure he would have been blinded otherwise, thanks to the sheer size of the diamond set in the ring in the box. “Wow,” was all he could think to say. “That’s, uh, that’s quite a rock you’ve got there.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Is that a—yes! Of course. You have my blessing, of course.” Chuck transferred his gaze from the ring to Devon’s face, and did his best to hide the shock. “Sorry, was just startled by the, uh, bling.”

Again, he could see the sheer relief take over Devon’s face, and the other man grinned. “Been in my family for years. It was my great-grandmother’s. Think she’ll like it?”

“I think she’ll love it.” Chuck belatedly remembered that he was still holding his beer, and took a second to finish that off. It was a good thing he did, too, for Devon tackled him with a bear hug. Chuck grunted when he could breathe again. “I’m just not sure she’ll be able to lift her hand anymore. Though I do have to ask—are you sure? I mean, I mentioned stubbornness issues earlier.”

“I’m sure.” Devon set the ring on the bar top and waved at the aforementioned Chris. “Another round for me and my bro down here? Hey, soon I’ll mean that literally, hopefully!”

“Awesome,” Chuck said.

“Yes?”

“No, I was saying that it was—you know what? Never mind. Cheers. I’m happy for you, Devon, I really am.”

“Thanks, bro. That means a lot to me.” As Chris set another beer in front of Chuck and another glass of tonic water in front of Devon, the latter frowned. “Oh, right, I needed to ask you a favor, buddy. Do you think you could hold onto this for me? Just for a day or two, while I figure out how to propose? Ellie’s a bloodhound when it comes to these things. If I keep them at either of the apartments, she is going to smell diamond.”

“Are you sure I’m the best person for that?” Chuck asked, eyeing the ring nervously now. “I might lose it.”

“Try not to, but I have faith in you. You’ll be fine.” Devon’s cell phone began to cheep. “Unfortunately, that’s my cue. I’m needed at the hospital, dude.”

“Go on, I’ve got this,” Chuck said. 

“No need. Chris, drinks on my tab?”

“Sure, Doc. No problem.”

“Thanks. See you around, Chuck.” Devon grabbed his own messenger bag and with a wave, left Chuck to his beer and the ring.

After he’d left, Chuck picked up the ring and opened the box, blinking a few times. His sister was getting married. Ellie. Devon was going to ask Ellie to marry him, the sort of thing that meant for better or for worse, in sickness and health. He’d been a little surprised when he had come back in October, to find that Devon and Ellie were still together, but not married. He would have been happy for both of them if they’d gotten married while he had been in Siberia, but now—assuming Ellie said yes—he was going to get to see it happen.

“Nice ring,” the bartender said. “I’m sure you two will be very happy together.”

Chuck started to splutter and explain, but decided he didn’t really care. “Thanks,” he said, and finished his beer.

**31 JANUARY 2008**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**21:53 PST**

Casey took one look at Chuck in the doorway of their shared apartment, his eyes cutting to Chuck’s hand and back to his face, and swore. “Good lord, please tell me that isn’t for Walker.”

Chuck hurriedly shoved the ring in his messenger bag. “It’s not.” He couldn’t imagine trying to propose to Sarah, not when her smile regularly increased his chances of walking into walls, cars, doors, and all manner of other dangerous things. Besides, the ring type was all wrong for Sarah, anyway. He imagined she would probably go for the big diamond, but she seemed like she would want something maybe just a little less flashy and—why the hell was he thinking about this? He pushed it aside and really looked around at the living room of the apartment.

They weren’t neatniks or anything, but he and Casey weren’t usually this messy. There were fast food wrappers all over the coffee table, next to an open bottle of Jim Beam and the open gun-cleaning kit that told Chuck every gun in Casey’s not-inconsiderable closet was now spotless. After the first look and cutting remark, the NSA agent ignored him, focusing on the Call of Duty campaign taking over the flat-screen. 

“Having a good night, Case?” Chuck asked, picking up the Jim Beam to determine the level of alcohol left inside. Casey certainly looked pretty sober, and given the rate he was fragging noobs, he didn’t seem to be any worse for the wear.

The other man grunted.

“That’s weird, you’re normally a Jack Daniels man.”

“Grabbed the wrong bottle off the shelf. Would you move? You’re between me and killing Nazis.”

“Oh. My bad.” Chuck moved out of the way. At any other point, he would have just ignored Casey and gone straight upstairs to put in some work on his computer or play some video games himself, but right now, he hesitated. It struck him as odd and weirdly coincidental that the same day they would find out Casey’s dead lover was engaged to be married, Devon would ask him to hold onto an engagement ring for Ellie. So many changes in relationships, he couldn’t help but think. For Ellie, for Casey, even for himself and Sarah.

“You gonna stand there all night, Bartowski?” Casey asked without looking at the screen. “You got something to say, say it.” His tone warned Chuck what would happen if that something to say included the words “Ilsa” or “Russians.”

“No, nothing to say,” Chuck said. “I was just wondering…”

“Yes?”

“Do you want a wingman?”

Casey’s fingers paused on the controller. He eyed Chuck up and down. “You wanna stay, you gotta drink.”

Chuck picked up the Jim Beam. “What? Drink this?”

“Whassa matter? Afraid of getting a little hair on your chest?”

“I love the implication that sobriety is a slight against my manhood,” Chuck said. “I had a couple of beers earlier, but fine. I don’t have any plans, I guess I can drink with you.” He set the bottle back on the coffee table, kicked off his shoes, and padded over to the kitchen.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting a glass, duh. Real men use glasses. My sister told me so.”

“Cute, Bartowski.” But Casey didn’t grumble any further as Chuck joined him on the couch, picking up the other controller as he did so. While Casey changed the game over, he poured himself a generous helping of Jim Beam. He really didn’t have any plans for the evening. Ellie had a shift at the hospital, Morgan had to work the Buy More, and Sarah would probably be overseeing the FBI team they were using for surveillance.

“And no talking about Ilsa,” Casey said as Chuck choked down the first sip.

Chuck had to fight a cough. “What? I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Yes, you were. You’d have been sly about it, but I know you and your bleeding heart, Bartowski. I’m not one of your adopted strays. We’re not talking about Ilsa.”

Chuck took a longer sip. He’d forgotten just how strong Jim Beam was, when he’d only had a few beers in the past few months. It really was a good thing he didn’t plan to go anywhere. “Got it. No talking about Ilsa. Can we kill some Nazis now?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

**31 JANUARY 2008**   
**BACHELOR PAD**   
**22:50 PST**

Chuck picked off yet another enemy soldier and mimicked Casey’s grunt. “I just don’t get why you keep picking the M1 over the STG-44 every time. The killshot ratio is—crap!” He ducked back behind a low wall. It was sheer imagination, but he swore he could feel the breeze brush against his scalp where the sniper missed. He told himself the alcohol wasn’t affecting him; his character just seemed slower than usual tonight.

“Sentimentality,” Casey said, grunting again as his character ran to take out the sniper.

“Sentimentality? You’ve been playing this game less than four months!”

“Learned to shoot on an M1 Garand,” Casey said, and Chuck temporarily forgot he was in the middle of a war zone surrounded by Nazis at the wistful tone in Casey’s voice. “My grandfather kept one in perfect condition, and he used to let me shoot it when we’d go out to the woods together. That thing was a beauty.”

“Oh.” Chuck looked back at the screen and yelped. “Maybe you might want to point that thing of beauty at the guy trying to kill me, Casey!”

Casey muttered under his breath unintelligibly for a minute. “I swear, Bartowski, I let you take one or two—”

“Three, actually.”

“Measly little headshots, and it’s all bitch, bitch, bitch.”

“Yeah, well, it’s my head and I happen to be fond of the number of holes it already has, I don’t need any more!”

“I’d be happier,” Casey said, “if you shut those holes a little more often. There, see, I took care of the guy. Happy now?”

“Ecstatic.”

**31 JANUARY 2008**   
**BACHELOR PAD**   
**23:38 PST**

“No kidding? You had a .44 magnum? For reals?” Chuck fumbled a little as he reached for his glass. When it came up empty, he frowned and grabbed the bottle. He only spilled a little alcohol on the coffee table this time. “You used it to stop some punk from robbing a bank, right?”

“I did not.” Casey scowled viciously, his tongue stuck out one corner of his lips as he concentrated on the screen. “Bartowski! Pull your damned weight, would you?”

“What? Oh, right.” Chuck grabbed the controller and attempted to maneuver his soldier around to shoot the guy giving Casey trouble, but he kept running into a wall until—“Crap on a stick! Why the hell does that keep happening?”

“Because your big, fat head is an easy target, moron.”

“It hurts my feelings when you talk to me that way, Casey. It really does.”

“Shut it and get back to help me out.”

Chuck grumbled, but did as he was told. “Damn Nazis.”

“Damn Nazis,” Casey agreed. “What the hell does it matter if I had a .44 magnum for? It was only one mission.”

Chuck gaped at him for so long that blood spattered his half of the screen once more. “What does it matter? What does it—Casey, that’s the gun that Dirty Harry uses! He is the _one_ person on the planet that’s able to ask you if you feel lucky, and you know it’s not a joke or a spoof. C’mon, he is Dirty Harry, greatest cop _ever_ , and maybe greatest Clint Eastwood character, too.”

“It’s not even the coolest gun I’ve fired, Bartowski. Will you get your damned head in the game?”

“One second.” Chuck tossed back half of the contents of his glass and faced the screen with renewed vigor. The entire room was beginning to swim a little, but it felt pleasant, like being dunked in a Jacuzzi or something. “All right, Mr. Tough Guy Dirty Harry’s Gun Wasn’t Even the Coolest Gun I’ve Shot, what _is_ the coolest gun?”

“Besides Bitchin’ Betty?”

“The mini-gun at Castle?” Chuck asked, blinking sluggishly as he used his Walther to take out an enemy soldier. “That’s what you mean, right?”

“Right.” Casey swayed a little as he grunted. “We got one of those new SCARs in last week. As far as assault rifles go, it’s pretty…”

“Sweet?” Chuck asked, filling in for him.

“I was just going to say pretty.” Casey frowned. “I haven’t gotten to shoot it yet.”

“Why the hell not? Is it pretty or isn’t it?”

“Been too busy watching your bony ass, haven’t I?”

“My ass is not bony.” Though he was a little worried it might be, so Chuck wiggled said article. “And I’m sad you haven’t gotten to shoot your pretty gun, Casey. I really am. Hey! Where are you going? We’re in the middle of a campaign here.”

“Screw the campaign. I’m going to shoot the SCAR.”

Chuck blinked. “You can’t do that. You’re drunk.”

“No, moron, _you’re_ drunk. I’m fine.” Casey proved it by swaying again as he reached for his shoes.

“You’ve had just as much to drink as I have. I counted.” It was a point of some pride, and maybe a little contention, that he was able to keep up with Casey at all. 

“Yeah, well, unlike some here, I can actually hold my alcohol,” Casey said, sneering. Instead of heading for the front door, however, he took off in the opposite direction.

“Where are you going?”

“The head. Do you mind?”

“Oh. Right.” Chuck leaned forward to pull on his shoes again, the shiny black shoes that went with his tuxedo. They’d lost the jacket at the party earlier when they had turned him from a black tie party guest to a waiter, and he had stripped out of the vest, but he still had the pants and shirt and the shoes, even if they were a little scuffed. He frowned at one scrape across the toe and licked his thumb to rub it off. As he did so, his phone fell out of his pocket. He picked it up and looked at the viewscreen, which was a picture of Sarah, naturally.

A grin spread across his face.

He should call Sarah. She would probably get a kick out of Casey shooting the SCAR. She liked weapons. 

It took her a minute to answer. When she did, her voice was sleepy. “Chuck? Is something wrong?”

“Not at all,” Chuck said. “I just thought—wait, were you asleep? You sound like you were sleeping.”

“It’s nearly midnight, Chuck.”

Chuck looked at the clock, and his eyes widened. “Oh, crap! I’m sorry. Well, sorta sorry, if we’re going to be honest here and it’s important to be honest and—”

“Sorta sorry? What are you talking about?”

“Well, you sound good when you’re sleepy, so I can’t be sorry about that, now can I?”

The pause on the other end of the line went for so long that Chuck pulled the phone away from his ear to check and make sure they hadn’t been disconnected. They hadn’t, which was good. It had been hard enough dialing her number in the first place. 

“Chuck,” Sarah finally said, and he heard that amused tone in her voice that he absolutely loved because it always made him want to smile, “how much have you had to drink?”

“Some. A little.”

“How much is a little?”

“Uh, some beers, and Casey was having some Jim Beam and insulted my manhood, so I had some of that, too. I think that means I’m manly now, but I’d have to check and get back to you about that.”

“Uh-huh. Have you been drinking any water?”

“What would I do that for?”

“I’m going to take that as a no, then. I think you should go pour yourself a glass of water, Chuck. And one for Casey, too.”

Chuck looked at the bottle of Jim Beam, considerably depleted. “I don’t know if I should. Would that be considered manly? Casey says I give into my lady feelings too much.”

“I think everything you do is manly, Chuck.”

“Really?” He felt himself brighten. “Even the screams of terror?”

It sounded like Sarah might be muffling laughter on the other end of the line, though he had no idea why she would need to. Even that sound, however, was enough to make his smile broaden.

Casey came out of the bathroom, took a look at him, and groaned. “Tell me you didn’t call Walker!”

Chuck covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Of course I called ‘Walker.’ I thought she might want to see you shoot the gun, too, if it’s as cool as you—why are you slashing a hand across your throat? Sarah’s cool, I promise. I know you don’t like her because she’s, in your own words, a CIA skirt, but Casey, you’ve really got to give her a fair shake and why are you still making that motion at me? I’m confused, Casey.”

“Moron! Don’t tell Walker about the SCAR!”

“Why not? She’s my girlfriend, Casey. You’re supposed to tell your girlfriend things.”

“Not this, you’re not supposed to.” Casey’s glare could melt steel. “She’ll stop us.”

“Oh. Right! Right. Uh, I can fix this.” Chuck thought long and hard for a moment, then removed his hand from the phone. “Sarah? Are you still there?”

“SCAR?” Sarah asked, no longer sounding sleepy.

“No, it’s Chuck. Chu-uck, remember?”

“Chuck, what are you up to?” A great deal of suspicion laced Sarah’s voice.

“Nothing. We’re, uh, we’re playing video games and we’re going to stay at the Bachelor Pad all night, and not go shoot the cool new gun in Castle’s armory. Good night, love you, bye, Sarah!”

“Wait—”

But Chuck hung up. “Okay, I told her we’ll be here playing video games all night, we should be clear.”

“Well, good, let’s go.”

“But Casey, I don’t think either one of us should drive—”

“Which is why we’ll hail a cab. March, soldier.”

“Yes, sir.”

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**CASTLE: PARKING LOT**   
**00:02 PST**

“Hey, look!” Chuck piled happily out of the cab, nearly tripping over his own shoes in the process—it wasn’t his fault, he was so used to the Chucks, and the tuxedo shoes were really kind of slippery—and bounding across the parking lot. “I thought you were sleeping!”

“I was—mmph.” Sarah’s words were cut off by his enthusiastic embrace as Chuck swept her up. He leaned back to grin at her. She wore her usual sleep-gear: Chuck’s old Stanford shirt and since it was February, a pair of flannel pajama bottoms. She’d thrown on her combat boots and a jacket over the ensemble, but her hair was slapped back in a ponytail and she didn’t look like she’d put on any makeup. She still looked stunning. “Well, hi.”

“Hi. I’m glad you’re here. I missed you.” Chuck’s brow wrinkled. “Wait, why are you here? Did you have work to do or something?”

“Or something. Where’s your coat?”

“At the Bachelor Pad. I’m not cold. Why? Are you cold? I wish I’d brought my coat, if that’s the case. The guy in movies is always giving his coat to the girl, and it’s supposed to be really romantic, but if you don’t have a coat then—” It was Chuck’s turn to break off in surprise as Sarah stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. He blinked at her before the smile spread. “What was that for? You’re trying to get me to shut up, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” said a voice behind Chuck, and he half turned, still holding onto Sarah. He’d completely forgotten Casey was there. “And not only did it not work, I’ve now had to witness two of those little shows. Bartowski, you need to pay the cab driver. I forgot my wallet.”

“Oh, right.”

“I’ve got it,” Sarah said. “You two get in the Jeep.”

Casey’s face fell. “What?”

“I know exactly what you two came here to do, and not tonight. So get in the Jeep. I’ll take you home.”

“But Walker—”

Sarah’s face took on that steely set Chuck remembered well from the Acropolis. “That’s an order, Major Casey.”

“But Casey wants to shoot the SCAR. It’s the coolest gun we have,” Chuck said, putting on his best wheedling grin, the one he knew usually worked wonders with Sarah.

This time, it didn’t seem to have much affect on her. “You two can shoot it tomorrow.”

“For reals?”

“For reals,” Sarah said. “I meant that, Casey. In the Jeep.”

Casey gave her a dour look and trudged off to Sarah’s Jeep, his steps slow and dragging. “You, too, Chuck,” Sarah said.

“Can I drive?”

“No, but if you beat Casey there, you can have shotgun.”

“Sweet! Shotgun!” Chuck took off toward the Jeep, only to be elbowed out of the way by Casey. The other man put a hand over his face and shoved him back. “Hey, no fair, I called shotgun.”

“And I’m still bigger than you. Deal.”

When Sarah climbed into the driver’s seat, she looked back to grin at Chuck. “Didn’t beat Casey?”

“He’s bigger than me.”

“Maybe next time.” Sarah started the car and turned the radio on. It was on the Oldies station, which should make Casey happy, and Chuck only wrinkled his nose a little. “You two been having a good night?”

“It was good until you showed up,” Casey said, crossing his arms over his chest and scowling. “We would have been fine, Walker.”

“Don’t worry, Casey, you can show Chuck how cool the gun is tomorrow. I’ll even include extra ammo in the next supply request.”

Most of the grumpiness in Casey’s mien cleared. “Really? You’d do that?” 

“Mm-hmm.”

“You’re okay, Walker.”

“Thanks, Casey. I happen to think the same about you. What are you doing back there, Chuck?”

“Uh…” He drew his hand away from the window quickly. “Nothing. I wasn’t writing ‘Tron’ on the window.”

“Great. More for me to Windex tomorrow.”

“Smooth, Bartowski.”

“Hey, ‘Tron’ is the greatest movie ever, you know.”

They didn’t pull into the Bachelor Pad’s parking lot, however, but the lane behind the apartment, which made both men blink around them in confusion. “Walker, you lost?” Casey asked as Chuck piled out of the backseat, stumbling a bit. The world had begun to swim a little less pleasantly. He wondered if Sarah had any alcohol that could bring the buzz back. He’d been enjoying not thinking so much. The world no longer seemed just a bit too large and he no longer felt like he secretly didn’t belong. The easy swirl through his system, the heat below his sternum that was always there whenever Sarah was around: he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

“No, I’m not lost. You two are staying with me tonight.”

“What? Why here? You could just stay with us, and I can sleep in my own damn bed.”

“Because it’s easier for you to flag down a cab from your place than it is here, and I can keep an eye on both of you.” Sarah pointed at each in turn. “And besides, Ellie has a better medicine cabinet.”

Chuck blinked at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ask me again in the morning. C’mon, fellas, this way.” Sarah eased her way under Chuck’s left arm, wrapping her own arm around his back. He happily leaned a little against her. She was always so warm, and she smelled good. “What were you playing this time?”

“Call of Duty. We were supposed to frag Nazis, but Casey kept letting me get shot.”

“Casey kept letting _you_ get shot?” Sarah looked between the two men in confusion.

“Payback,” the NSA agent said, and laughed.

“What for?” Chuck asked, highly affronted.

“Everything, Bartowski. Everything.”

“You’re a bit of a sadistic bastard, John Casey,” Sarah said.

“A bit?”

Something occurred to Chuck, and he stopped so abruptly that he felt Sarah stumble into him. He looked down at her, seriously. “Sarah, if you’re going to be with us the rest of the night, you’ve got to know.”

“Know what?”

“The rules.”

“What rules?”

“The rules,” Chuck said, drawing the word out as his vision seemed to stretch and blur Sarah’s face a little. His head began to feel heavier. “If you’re gonna drink with us, you’ve gotta be manly, and no talking about Ilsa. But it’s okay if you’re not manly. You’re a girl, I like that.”

“I like that you like that. All right, I won’t talk about Ilsa.”

“That’s good. Because Casey doesn’t want to talk about Ilsa.”

“I can see that. Let’s get inside, yeah?” Once they were inside, Chuck let himself be led to the couch, while Casey took a spot on one of the easy chairs on either side. Casey’s face had darkened again into that dangerous look Chuck recognized well from having worked with the other man for months, and he wondered what had happened. Before he could think to ask, though, Sarah came back, holding two tall glasses of clear liquid.

“Vodka?” Chuck asked.

“Water.”

“That’s not as fun.”

“I’ll remind you that you said that in about eight hours. Drink it all.”

Chuck shrugged, but did as he was told. He knew sometimes Sarah got annoyed at him for not listening well enough, so he figured he could oblige her now. When he finished the glass, he held it out to her. She only left to refill it. “Not again,” he moaned.

“You’ll thank me later, I promise.”

“This makes me think of the movie ‘Waterworld,’” Chuck said glumly. “By the time I finished watching that, I was so sick of water. I can’t even imagine how Costner felt, filming that. It must have sucked.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Or one of those ‘Pirates of the Carribbean’ movies. I mean, shot after shot of being splashed with salt water, and that’s on the days you’re not being tossed overboard.”

“Or wearing an uncomfortable corset.”

“Or wearing an uncomfortable—thank you, Sarah, that’s a good point. Or wearing an uncomfortable corset.”

“Should’ve known you wear a lot of corsets, Bartowski,” Casey muttered.

“They flatter my figure.” Chuck stuck his tongue out at his roommate. When he turned to look at Sarah for back-up, he blinked. She was holding her phone up. “Why are you—why are you pointing your phone at me?”

“No reason,” Sarah said, smiling at him. He felt the need to smile back. “Keep going. You were saying? Pirates?”

“Are you—” Chuck squinted. “You’re filming me!”

“I am not. Just keep going.”

“You are.” Chuck pointed a finger at her, and trailed off for a few seconds, fascinated by the way it wobbled at the end of his arm. He forced his attention back onto Sarah. “That’s really weird because I didn’t know you knew how to use your camera phone.”

Sarah laughed. “That’s absurd. Of course I do.”

“Uh-huh. Then why is it, when we moved here, you were all, ‘Chuck, I can’t figure this out, can you help me with it? Can you show me how to do this? Oh, Chuck, my computer’s busted again, can you fix it?’”

“I do not sound like that!”

“Sure you do,” Casey put in, pinching the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. He had a mostly full glass of water still in hand. “You’re a girl, and that’s a girly voice. You sound exactly like that.”

“See?” Chuck asked.

Sarah rounded on Casey. “Don’t encourage him!”

“Why not? I have to deal with you two all the time, don’t I? Shouldn’t I get my own kicks in? For the record, you’re weird, Walker, to get all hot and bothered by a geek.”

“Hey!” Chuck lifted his head from his water glass. “It’s nerd.”

Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t sound like that,” she repeated.

Uh-oh, Chuck thought. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Immediately, he set his water glass to the side, ignoring the way it wobbled dangerously on the edge of the coaster, and gave Sarah the puppy dog eyes. “I’m sorry for making fun of your voice, Sarah. You don’t really sound like that. You sound much prettier.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said, and leaned toward him.

Something had occurred to Chuck, though. He gasped and pointed. “It was a trick!” he said, staring at Sarah.

She immediately froze. “What? What are you talking about?”

“All of that needing help with your computer when we first came out to California. You didn’t really need help, did you? You were just doing like they do in the movies, you know, with the ‘Oh, I don’t know how to hold a bat! Can you show me?’” He’d put his voice into a high falsetto for that, but now he switched to a bass register. “‘Why, sure, little lady, no problem! Here, let me use this excuse to put my arms around you!’”

“It took you this long, and being drunk, to notice?”

“I…” Chuck couldn’t find a good reply to that in his memory banks. He frowned and took a drink of water.

“I met her in Rome.” Casey’s voice was quieter than Chuck and Sarah’s voices had been, but it somehow seemed to reverberate throughout the whole room.

Chuck narrowed his eyes, studying Casey. “Met who in Rome?” he asked, and then it occurred to him. “Are you talking about Ilsa? I thought the rules were—”

“Shh!” Sarah actually pushed her hand over his mouth, and he tried to nip at her fingers. She hooked her arm around his neck in retaliation and pulled him closer to her, but didn’t remove her hand. “Go on, Casey. You were saying?”

Casey didn’t look at either of them. He just continued to stare into his water glass, balanced on his knee, his fingers resting on the rim. “She was beautiful. It was at the Campo de’ Fiori, on a Tuesday morning. I remember that. I was late for a meeting, and I had to stop and stare because she was more beautiful than any of the flowers in the market.”

Chuck was about to ask what kind of flowers there were, but Sarah, who hadn’t removed her hand from his mouth yet, simply shifted and forced him to adjust. She moved so that she was using him for a chair back rather than the sofa, sitting in his lap, and he had to put an arm around her middle or end up with a cramped shoulder. He didn’t mind. Her hair was soft against his cheek.

“So then what happened?” Sarah asked Casey.

“I asked her to dinner. Well, probably begged.” Casey frowned and took a drink of water. “Maybe I begged. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I asked her to dinner, and she said, ‘Where?’ I couldn’t think of anywhere, so I said, ‘Right here.’ And when she said, ‘When?’ I said ‘Right now.’ She told me it was breakfast time, not dinner time, and I told her I would gladly wait for any time with her.”

“Aw,” Sarah said.

Casey glowered at her. “No comments from the peanut gallery.”

Chuck could feel Sarah’s suppressed laughter shake against his ribcage, and hid his face in Sarah’s hair. “Did she say yes?” he asked.

“I don’t remember.” Casey frowned. “We had dinner together, yes, and before that, lunch, and before that, breakfast. I never made it to that meeting. We just spent all day walking all over Rome and talking. She was easy to talk to. And one thing led to another, and then we were taking assignments that meant we could stay together. She was a photographer, and she worked in a lot of zones the NSA had interests in, so it worked out.”

“So you both went to Chechnya?” Sarah asked.

“Yes. Just another assignment for both of us. Or so I thought.” Casey’s frown grew deeper. “I was convinced nobody could have survived that blast. I found her camera outside the little café, but there was never enough DNA to match her to any of the burned bodies.”

“So how did she survive?” Chuck asked.

“She doesn’t know.” Casey took a long drink of water. “Woke up in the hospital two months later, she told me today. Didn’t remember a thing.” He paused for a long time. “But she never forgot my face.”

“Hey, that means there’s hope for you yet. I mean, never forgetting your face, that’s some pretty heady stuff right there,” Chuck said, and Sarah elbowed him. “Oof! What was that for?”

Sarah didn’t look at Chuck. “Sorry, Casey. I’ll get him out of your hair.”

“It’s okay. Maybe he’s right.” Casey finished off the water. “Hope for me yet. Heh. I almost like how that sounds. Am I getting the couch?”

“It’s comfortable, I promise. I’ll go get you some blankets. Chuck, c’mon, let’s get you settled, too.” Sarah pulled Chuck to his feet and kept an arm around him, which he deduced was a good thing. He didn’t remember the floor of Ellie’s apartment being this uneven before. It seemed unfair.

“Good night, Casey,” he called over his shoulder.

There was a pause from where Casey was settling himself on the couch. “G’night, Chuck.”

Sarah pushed open the door of her own bedroom with her free hand and Chuck felt himself being guided to the bed. He blinked. He was used to seeing it made on the occasions he did come over, and he vaguely recalled calling Sarah and having her reply in the sleepy Sarah voice. Oh. She must have gotten out of bed to come meet him and Casey at Castle. “What are we doing in here?” He thought about it for a moment, then perked up, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Are we in here to make out so that Casey doesn’t see?”

Sarah’s smile could light up solar systems. “I should have gotten you drunk a long time ago,” she said, and pushed on his shoulder until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Shoes.”

“What?”

“Kick off your shoes.”

“Oh. I can do that.” Chuck did so and smiled at Sarah. “Now what?”

“Your shirt.”

“Um, that’s a bit forward don’t you think?”

“You’ve got an undershirt on under it.”

“I still don’t think—” Chuck broke off when Sarah kissed him. He forgot all about forward and backward and everything but Sarah. She was standing over him, so it was his turn to crane his neck, but he didn’t mind overmuch. He pulled her closer with one hand, the other hand reaching up to pull her ponytail loose. She felt even better than she smelled, was all he could think. He leaned back, intending to lie down and pull her with him, but she just broke the kiss. He blinked at her. “What was that?”

“Distraction.”

“What?” He didn’t understand until he looked down and realized she’d unbuttoned his shirt. “Wow, you’re good. Do they teach you that at spy school?” 

“Same principle as pickpocketing. C’mon, let’s get you out of this. You’ll sleep more comfortably.”

“Oh, sleep sounds good.” Chuck moved to lie down right then but Sarah grabbed his shoulders, stopping him. “What’s the matter? Is it not time to sleep? Oh, that’s right. I should be polite and wait for you. You probably want to sleep with me.”

“If there’s a God, he’s laughing at me right now,” Sarah said.

“What?”

“Nothing. Let’s get your shirt off, and then you can lie down.”

Chuck felt his brow wrinkle yet again. “ _Do_ you want to sleep with me, Sarah?” It seemed like an important question, but he had no idea why.

She went still, absolutely unmoving in that way she had, the way that was more than just her normal conservation of energy movement. It made him think of great works of art, even now, though in his current state he couldn’t actually name any of those works of art. The world was far too hazy and blurry and disconnected for that.

“Well?” Chuck asked. “Do you?”

Sarah smoothed a hand over his hair. “When you’re ready.”

He wanted her to kiss him again, so he gave her his best wheedling grin and grabbed her hand with both of his own, playing idly with her fingers. “I’m ready now.”

Sarah closed her eyes and breathed in, very deeply. She let out the breath slowly. “I apparently picked the wrong moment to film. I wonder if you’ll believe me when I tell you about this in the morning.”

“I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t.”

“I know. Tell you what, I’ve got to go get some blankets for Casey. Why don’t you lie down and wait for me to come back?” Sarah looked around her own room for a moment and retrieved something from under the desk. She set it down beside the bed: a trash can. “Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“You’ll figure it out.” Sarah waited until he had crawled beneath the covers on the other side of the bed, careful to avoid the spot where she’d obviously been sleeping earlier. Then she stroked his hair again and kissed his forehead. “I’ll be right back.”

“Can’t wait,” Chuck said. He frowned when Sarah shut the light off on her way out to fetch blankets for Casey. He would have liked to look around her room a little, since he rarely got the opportunity to be in here when she wasn’t, and he knew she had been adding her own touches to the space in the past few months. He couldn’t really make out anything farther than the nightstand, which held what looked like a fashion magazine and some hand lotion that smelled like Sarah. Chuck considered getting up and poking around her desk, but before he could actually move, his eyelids began to drift close as the world darkened slowly, lulling him away from the shimmery realms of consciousness.

The last thing he heard before he gave in fully was the door opening and closing. He felt something warm against his right side, and the world suddenly seemed better and more comfortable, and after that he knew no more.


	46. My Favorite Russian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. — _Henry Ford_

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**’SKI/WALKER RANCH**   
**08:40 PST**

Why on earth Chuck had decided to lick a dumpster, he had no idea, but given the way his mouth felt when he clawed his way out of the haze of sleep and into wakefulness, he had apparently indulged himself in a few of Los Angeles’s finest waste disposal systems. He groaned and ran his tongue over his teeth, wondering just how the fungus had managed to infect his mouth and grow so fast over his canines and molars.

Of course, it was then that the headache hit him. And the nausea followed gleefully in its wake and socked him right in the stomach.

Right then, Chuck Bartowski wanted to die.

He didn’t care how. Quickly, slowly, it didn’t matter, as long as it _ended_. His brain shoved against the back of his eyeballs so hard that he could all but feel pressure building in his ears, which also ached as if somebody had been yanking on them all night. The throbbing came in waves of intense pain, slightly less intense pain, agony, misery, agony again, and back to the intense pain.

What the hell had the Russians _done_ to him?

He groaned, and quickly stopped when that proved to be a Bad Idea. The groan felt like a jackhammer shoved at the point where his skull met his neck, turned on full force. It only made him groan again, which turned out to be a vicious, vicious cycle that reinforced his desire to simply end his life on the spot.

The spot, a stray thought slipped in, that smelled really nice. Like grapefruit and vanilla and cinnamon, scents that shouldn’t really blend well, but somehow did. It was familiar in a way that would have made him smile if he hadn’t felt so downright miserable. It reminded him of…Sarah. 

Chuck’s eyes snapped open.

Yet another Bad Idea. He groaned. It wasn’t the spotlight used by a torturer or an interrogator, but regular sunlight, he was pretty sure. He was also positive that that innocuous sunlight had burned his corneas right of his eyeballs. Why the hell the gods of the sun had become so vengeful against him, he had no idea, but maybe he had pissed in Apollo’s Froot Loops yesterday. It wasn’t like he would be able to remember if he had or not. He could remember nothing but his own name, the intoxicating scent of Sarah, and the pain. 

Speaking of Sarah, if she was anywhere nearby, as the scent would indicate, she might be feeling just as miserable. That meant she might need his help. That thought was the only thing steady enough for him to grasp, and quite possibly the only single thing on the planet that could convince him to open his eyes again.

When he did, he immediately wished he hadn’t, but there wasn’t any way he could take the knowledge back.

He was in Sarah’s room.

More specifically, he was in Sarah’s bed. And when he looked under the covers, it got worse: he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Or pants, he realized a second later. He was in Sarah’s bed, in his boxer shorts, and he had no memory as to how he could have possibly gotten there. Panicked, he looked around, bloodshot eyes scanning everything for some kind of clue, anything that would tell him what had happened. The room painted a grim picture: he could see tuxedo shoes—in his size—beyond the foot of the bed, looking like he’d just kicked them off, there was a man’s dress shirt folded over the desk chair, but on his side of the bed, there lay his undershirt and a pair of dress pants, strewn across the floor.

“No,” he moaned, pushing his hands against his face and scrubbing them over his hair. It was more than nausea making him want to throw up now. “No, no, no, no.”

There was no way the gods would be so cruel. No way anything would be so malevolent as to let him sleep with Sarah Walker and then not remember a thing about it.

“Haven’t I been tortured _enough_?”

Evidently the answer to that one was no because just as Chuck asked, the door opened, and Sarah strode into her own room, wearing nothing but a towel and some of the water leftover from her shower. She pulled up short, and a huge smile broke out over her face. “Hey! You’re awake.”

Chuck looked from her face, wreathed by the hair dripped onto her shoulders, down her arms, his gaze settling on the knot of the towel between her breasts. It took a mammoth effort, but he hauled his gaze back to her face and offered her a weak smile. “Hi.”

“Good morning.” She crossed around to his side of the bed, brushing her hair over one shoulder, and sat down. “Ready for another round?”

Chuck felt the blood drain out of his face and the nausea double. “An-another round?”

“Yeah. I think you are. Here.”

It took everything in Chuck’s willpower not to scramble backwards in surprise when Sarah reached out. Instead of grabbing him, however, she picked up something from the nightstand and handed it to him. He looked down at the glass of water, baffled.

“I’ve been trying to force water into you pretty regularly since you showed up last night,” Sarah said, smiling at him in a way that the amount of oxygen in the room drop sharply. “At least you’re no longer babbling about Kevin Costner.”

“What?”

“You’ll probably want to take these, too.” Sarah picked up his hand and dumped a few pills into it. “I fished them out of Ellie’s medicine cabinet—she swears it’s a perfect hangover cure, and we’ll have to take her word for it. I don’t drink much, myself.” She reached out again, but this time it was to stroke his hair. “You look pretty rough.”

“Sarah, did we…” Chuck licked his lips, which felt chapped and dry and as though he’d spent the last few years in a desert. The action only reminded him that his entire mouth tasted like sewage. “Did we…”

“Have sex?” Sarah’s eyebrows went up. “No, we didn’t. And you don’t look at all upset about that.”

When she gave him a hurt look, he shoved himself up so that he was sitting up straighter, nausea be damned. He nearly sloshed water everywhere. “No, no, it’s not like that. I just—I don’t remember a single thing about last night, and _I’d_ be the disappointed one because I’d prefer to remember my first time with you, but not in like a bad way or anything, like I’m awful in bed or because our having sex is truly the thing that triggers the oncoming apocalypse, but—”

He broke off because Sarah leaned forward and kissed him. Before he could figure out where he should put his hands—Sarah wearing nothing but a towel was like a veritable pit of vipers, and he hardly felt like Indiana Jones this morning—she leaned back and wrinkled her nose. “You need a breath mint. And a shower. Yuck.”

“Sorry.” Even though his stomach wanted to twist itself inside out at the mere thought of adding anything to it, he popped the pills into his mouth and drank down half of the water glass. “Um, if we didn’t sleep together, I suddenly feel that the question ‘Why am I in nothing but my boxers?’ is quite a bit more relevant, then.”

“You overheated in the middle of the night, so you took off your shirt. And then your pants.” Sarah gave him the evil variation of her grin, her eyes obviously raking over his exposed chest and shoulders. “For the record, I didn’t mind.”

And now, on top of everything else, he was blushing, damn it.

“That leads me to my next extremely relevant question: what the hell happened last night?”

“You played video games with Casey, drunk-dialed me, and tried to shoot your foot off with one of Castle’s new guns, so I brought you over here to keep an eye on you. Nothing happened between us.” Sarah paused, her eyes rolling impishly as she gave a pert little shrug. “Well, nothing much.”

Even though he imagined it would only make the migraine pounding his brain to dust worse, Chuck wanted desperately to remember what exactly “nothing much” meant. All he could remember, though, were patchy, blurred memories, like his brain had forgotten how to focus.

“Oh,” he said.

“If it makes you feel better, I let you be the big spoon,” Sarah said, patting his knee, which was still covered by the duvet.

“Uh, thanks.”

“No problem. Now, c’mon, get up. You’ll feel more human when you’ve had a shower, and neither of us is going to get anything done today if you keep trying to look down my towel and giving me ideas.”

Chuck blushed harder.

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**’SKI/WALKER RANCH**   
**09:12 PST**

Sarah was right, but then, in Chuck’s experience, she was very rarely wrong. The feel of the hot water pounding against his skull had been torture at first, but Ellie’s miracle hangover cure had begun to kick in pretty quickly. By the time he emerged from the shower, he felt less like an amorphous blob of agony and nausea and more like something vaguely humanoid. He got a good look at himself in the mirror and wondered, not for the first time, if Sarah was possibly insane for wanting to be anywhere near anything that looked like _that_. His eyes were more red than brown, his skin had a pallor only a zombie could love, and dark circles punched out from under his eyes like glorious shiners. He could only hope there wasn’t any need to video-conference with Washington, as they might drag him in for testing to figure out why the Intersect had died and been resurrected by Dr. Frankenstein.

Sarah had laid out one of his Stanford shirts in her room, and an old pair of jeans that must have been from his pre-Bunker days. They’d been baggy then, but they fit pretty well now. His physique had changed, thanks to the daily workouts. A ritual, he thought as he rubbed a hand over the day’s growth of stubble on his chin, he would just have to skip today.

His Dr. Frankenstein theory hadn’t been far off, judging from the way Sarah looked up from her coffee mug when he wandered into the kitchen and said, “It’s alive!”

“Ha, ha,” Chuck said. He got an old Buy More coffee mug down out of the cabinet and turned, jumping when he nearly ran into Sarah. “We’ve talked about this and how you need to make a noise when you walk. And hi.” The last was added because Sarah wrapped her arms around his neck. She gave him a much longer kiss than the one in the bedroom, pressing against him until he completely forgot where he was. “What was that for?”

“You look better.”

Chuck turned to pour himself a cup of coffee. “Apparently Ellie’s magical hangover cure works, though I have to tell you, it’s got nothing on the power of your smile.”

“Aww,” Sarah said, and kissed his cheek. “You really are feeling better.”

Chuck wiggled a hand from left to right. “I feel less like something somebody threw in a dumpster, at any rate. I had to borrow your toothbrush.”

Sarah returned to her place at the kitchen island. “That’s okay. To be clear, though, you used the blue one, right?” 

Chuck’s head shot up. “What? Your toothbrush isn’t the white one?”

“You used the white one?” Sarah gave him an incredulous look.

“Oh, God, did I use Awesome’s toothbrush? Oh, man, that’s so gross.” He felt like rinsing his mouth out a few dozen times. “I just assumed, since the white one was the one set off to the side, that it was yours, since Ellie and Awesome wouldn’t mind having their toothbrushes together and—you’re messing with me.”

Sarah finally let loose the smile that seemed like it had been building throughout his entire babbling statement. “It’s possible.”

Chuck gave her a sour look as he sat next to her at the island. “Uh-huh. Speaking of Ellie and Awesome, where are they?”

“Sleeping. They got in around six this morning. And Casey woke up an hour or so ago and headed back to the Bachelor Pad to get ready for work.”

“Oh.” Chuck frowned. In the shower, he’d remembered a little more about the night before—nothing about Kevin Costner, so he had no idea why Sarah had mentioned him—and Casey’s story about Ilsa. There had been so much pain and sincerity in the words that Chuck had been too drunk to understand at the time. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s hungover,” Sarah said, her voice dry. “I wouldn’t mention Jim Beam, Ilsa, or ‘Call of Duty’ to him today, if I were you.”

“Got it.”

“You’re also relieved of flashing today.”

“What?”

“I got Ellie to write you a doctor’s note before she crashed.”

Chuck stared at Sarah for a full thirty seconds before he could connect his brain to the words that needed to be said. “You just think of everything, don’t you?”

“It’s my job to handle the details.”

“And to be kick-ass and amazing?”

“What can I say? My résumé is impressive.” Sarah leaned over and kissed him again. She tasted like coffee, not at all unpleasant. “And I enjoy being good at what I do. But don’t thank me yet. Just because you can’t flash doesn’t mean you’re spared from the boring task of going over financial records and monitoring surveillance.”

“Beats flashing with a headache. Sarah, seriously, thank you.”

“Finish your coffee. We’ll grab some Danishes on the way to the office.”

“Awesome.” Chuck grabbed the empty mugs and rinsed them out in the sink before following Sarah out the door of her apartment. “Just for the record, your toothbrush _is_ the white one, right?”

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS**   
**13:26 PST**

By mutual and silent agreement, Chuck and Sarah left Casey to his own devices. The other man didn’t leave his office, save for a forty-five minute trip to the dojo to beat the ever loving daylights out of Frank. Chuck checked periodically on Castle’s security feed, but apart from an annoyed expression that wasn’t too far from his default look, Casey didn’t appear any different.

“I’m bored,” Sarah said, walking into his office and plopping into the spare desk chair.

Chuck looked up from the financial records. He’d been drinking water like a man dying of thirst, and it finally felt like it was kicking in—or at least, the text on the computer screen felt less like it was trying to punch him in the eyeballs at any rate. “Want me to entertain you?”

“I don’t know. Has your dancing improved?”

“Sorry, I charge extra for that.”

“I have a feeling you’d be worth every penny.” Sarah let out a peal of laughter when Chuck gave her a sour look. “No, I’m good, I just felt like telling you I was bored.” 

“Ah. Well, thanks for the news flash.”

“No problem.” Sarah swung her feet up onto the desk and leaned over her legs to tap a few keys on the second keyboard. The second set of monitors, which Chuck wasn’t using, sprang to life with the feed from the Grand Saville. “You don’t mind me in here, do you?”

“Not at all.”

“Good.” Sarah leaned back. “Poke me if I fall asleep.”

“Gotcha. Nothing exciting from our Russian buddies?”

“Their hangovers are worse than yours. Most of them have been asleep all morning.” Sarah leaned forward again, this time to grab the pretzels Chuck had been munching on and had consequently forgotten. “Any luck on the financials?”

“Definitely some sketchy characters, but I can’t really confirm anything from the financials. I’m starting to think they may just be here for a wedding. You’d think they’d pick some place a little more tropical or picturesque.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean, this group can clearly afford something much nicer, if they’re staying at the Saville. Why not Fiji or something?”

“Maybe Ilsa doesn’t want a beach wedding.”

“I guess. But that’s the weird thing.” Since Sarah looked comfortable, and he could use a break anyway, Chuck pushed his chair back to prop his feet on the desk. He reached over and snitched a few pretzels from the bag. “All of the wedding guests seem to be from Victor’s side, not Ilsa’s. In fact, I did some searching, and she doesn’t have any family.”

“None at all?”

“It’s like she didn’t exist before Rome.” At least, he thought it was Rome. Casey’s story about meeting Ilsa was still a little fuzzy thanks to the amount of alcohol imbibed at the time. “No records whatsoever.”

Sarah tilted her head, obviously considering this. “The government, try as they might, doesn’t keep the best records, especially since Ilsa is Eastern European. Though she hooked up with an NSA agent there, and that would definitely put her on their radar and could account for them knowing about her at all. And as far as your guest problem goes, I don’t know, I think when you date somebody, your friends might become mutual?”

“Oh, so Morgan is your best friend now?”

“No offense to Morgan, but God, no.”

Chuck smiled. “So you admit it’s weird that Ilsa doesn’t have anybody of her own attending the wedding?”

There was a long pause, and it looked like Sarah might have wanted to say something else, but she eventually shrugged. “Okay, maybe it’s a little strange.” When Chuck put his feet back down on the floor and scooted up to the desk again, she raised her eyebrow at him. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve learned that if something feels weird it’s usually because something’s weird. I’m going to check on Ilsa’s story. Keep an eye out for Casey.”

“Oh, now I get to play look-out? Do you want me to give you a signal if he’s coming?” Sarah sounded amused. “Make a bird call or something?”

“Yes. Or the signal could be, ‘Casey’s coming.’”

“I think I can remember that. What exactly are you checking?”

“Hospital records. Casey said she woke up two months later in a hospital with no memory, right? Surely there’s got to be a record of that.” Chuck pulled up a grid-search on Groznyy and narrowed it down to the hospitals that might have taken the bombing victims. It took a few minutes for his translation program to work, and he was able to sift through the records. “What’s Jane Doe in Russian?”

Before Sarah could tell him, however, the computer beeped. His search had found a hit. “Never mind, got her. Wow, the translation program really doesn’t like this file, hold on a second.”

Sarah had put her feet on the floor and was peering at the file. “Switch back to Russian?”

“Sure.” A few keystrokes later, Chuck sat back. He might have been in Siberia for years, but the Cyrillic text looked like medieval runes to him. He doubted that Sarah was reading about freezing hexes or ancient prophecies, though.

“That’s weird,” she said.

“What is?”

“The words are Russian, but the syntax is French.”

“Maybe she had a French doctor?”

“No, anybody with that vocabulary would use at least some Russian syntax. I think we should run Ilsa’s picture through the Interpol database.”

“What?”

“Just a hunch.”

Since Sarah’s hunches hadn’t ever steered him wrong, Chuck set up a facial recognition search. The program he was using on Interpol wasn’t quite…copacetic to international relations, but Digital Dave had programmed it, so Chuck wasn’t too worried. “What do you expect to find?”

“Casey’s previous work, before he took the job of guarding the Intersect facility and then you, was traveling to a lot of hotspots and war zones. AP photographer going to all of the same hotspots, that makes sense. But an AP photographer engaged to a Russian crime lord?” 

Chuck nodded slowly. “Yeah, the coincidence warnings are going off, I see what you mean. Of course, Ilsa _is_ pretty, so I could see…” When Sarah swung her chair around to face him with a quiet stare, his eyes widened. “Not that, you know, she’s my type. I’m just saying that by, ah, human standards, she’s very…aesthetically well put toge—oh, geez, that doesn’t work either and I think is just really making it worse. You know what, it’s time for Chuck to code something.” He very quickly applied himself to the keyboard.

“You know, you can say she’s pretty. I won’t mind.”

Chuck didn’t believe that for a second. He looked away from the keyboard to shoot Sarah the puppy dog eyes he knew usually worked with her. “You’re prettier.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I am in no way trying to dig up out of this hole I seem to have dug for myself, no.”

“Uh-huh,” Sarah said again, but a smile broke out over her face, and Chuck was sure if the cameras weren’t watching them, she would have kissed him then or at least messed with his hair. Today she just shook her head and turned back to the monitor. “Your cousin Grigory’s ordering room service.”

“Fourth cousin,” Chuck said. “That man, by the way, has arms of steel. Being bear-hugged by him was like actually being hugged by a bear and—oh, hey-yo, we got a hit.”

“Ilsa’s in the Interpol database?”

They heard the footsteps approaching as Chuck opened the file, and both of their heads jerked toward the security feed. Casey had a thick manila envelope in hand and was heading right toward Chuck’s office.

“I’ll distract him,” Sarah said, springing out of her chair. “You look at whatever’s in that file.”

“Got it,” Chuck said, and Sarah hurried out. 

He heard Casey pull up short. “What are you doing down here, Walker? I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t play with the nerd on company property.”

“Nothing of the sort is going on, Major Casey.” He could all but hear Sarah roll her eyes. “I was using the spare monitors in Chuck’s office.”

“Right.” Casey’s tone said he didn’t believe her in the slightest.

Chuck tuned them out. He had to bypass a few security levels to see whatever it was in the file, which made him pause—just who the heck was Ilsa that she was this heavily guarded?—but in the end, they were no match for him. At the final barrier of security, however, he paused, searching for something he wasn’t sure he was looking for. The computer seemed…glitchy. He sent his results of that step into a translation program to print off and focused on getting past the last bit of security around Ilsa’s file.

And when he opened it, his eyes widened.

Thirty seconds later, he stumbled into the hallway. “Guys, you’re never going to believe this. Ilsa’s not who we thought she was.”

“Ilsa?” Casey’s face immediately hardened. “My Ilsa?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I meant _oui_.”

“You’ve got three seconds to explain, Bartowski, before I take my foot and shove it up your—”

“She’s French. Even more, she’s a French spy.”

“What?” Sarah and Casey both asked.

“Check it.” Chuck scrambled back into the room so fast that he would have tipped his desk chair had Casey not grabbed the back at the last second. Chuck sent a rapid-fire string of commands into the computer, enlarging Ilsa’s file across all of the monitors. “Yes, she’s of Bosnian descent, but she was born in Paris and her parents still live there. She’s ex-military, served for four years before she transferred to the DGSE and has been a deep-cover agent for them ever since. The file mentions you, Casey.”

Chuck could practically hear leather crinkle and snap under Casey’s hand as he continued to grip the back of the seat. “It does?”

Sarah had apparently found that part of the file already, though, because she was leaning forward. “Only that she had to be extracted because the bosses believed her compromised with an American, suspected to be either NSA or CIA.”

“So it really sounds like she didn’t have a choice. Chances are, she didn’t even want to fake her death in that bombing,” Chuck said, looking back at the NSA agent.

“Shut up.”

“Shutting up.”

“The French are after Federov? What does the Directorate want with him?” Sarah asked.

Chuck cleared a monitor for his own use and began a grid-search on Victor Federov’s activity on French soil. It only took a few seconds for the search to begin finding hits. Rather than bother with the translation program to take its time, he sent that to the monitor in front of Sarah. “He was a suspect in some mob-style killings in ninety-three,” she said. “Charges dropped. Drug trafficking charges in ninety-four…ah, that’s probably it. They think he’s behind the bombs on those commuter trains in Lyon back in ninety-six.”

“That’s it,” Casey said, and pulled out his cell phone.

“What are you doing?” Sarah asked.

“Alerting the bosses that we’ve got a foreign operative acting on US soil without jurisdiction and getting her ass on the first plane back to Paris.”

Chuck exchanged a glance with Sarah as Casey dialed. “Isn’t that a bit…harsh?”

“Harsh, Bartowski? She lied to me. She should consider herself lucky we’re not sending her back in handcuffs. Yes, hello, Major John Casey for General Beckman. Yes, I’ll hold.” The last was said into the phone.

Chuck’s computer beeped as the program he’d set to work on the code around Ilsa’s file spat out a translation. He opened it, scanned the read-out, and said, “Oh, crap.”

Casey put one hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “What is it now?” 

“There was a—there was a glitch in Ilsa’s file when I hacked it, sort of like a digital footprint of somebody who was there before me.” Chuck swallowed hard. “He was sloppy, but he got through, but not before the computer tagged him. The ID tag belonged to Ivan Veduska. I flashed on him yesterday. He’s an associate of Federov’s.”

“They know she’s a spy,” Casey breathed.

Sarah glanced between Casey and Chuck. “I’ll go start the car.”

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**GRAND SAVILLE HOTEL**   
**15:02 PST**

As much as Casey wanted to burst into the hotel lobby in full tactical gear, guns blazing, Chuck and Sarah’s voices of reason won out, and the team strode into the Grand Saville with only side-arms and tranq guns. Well, Chuck corrected as he followed his teammates, he and Sarah strode; Casey’s walk was more like the prowl of a caged animal, despite all of the space in the Grand Saville’s airy, atrium-like lobby. Casey’s face was like the inside of a thunder-cloud, and Chuck half-expected that the other man was hoping somebody would mouth off at him, so that Casey would be justified in taking a swing. Chuck kept silent. He wouldn’t be on the end of that first punch, not with his head still in a vise with the last bits of hangover.

“Ilsa’s up in her suite,” Sarah said, checking the surveillance on her phone. “She’s alone. Casey, do you want to handle that, or coordinate with the FBI team?”

“I’ll take Ilsa.”

“Okay, I’ll deal with the FBI. Chuck, you’d probably better stay with Casey.” Sarah’s tone contained the unspoken part of her request: and keep him calm.

Chuck shot her a look— _like that’s going to happen_ —but hurried to keep up with his roommate as Sarah broke off toward the hotel suite the FBI had commandeered for the stakeout.

“You my watch-dog, Bartowski?” Casey said as they boarded an elevator. “Going to keep me from saying something I’ll regret?”

“Do I look suicidal?” Chuck said, making sure he was out of reach. Casey didn’t hit him, though he did make one of those subsonic noises Chuck feared above all. The nerd decided not to try his luck again. “What happens if we run into one of the Russian guards?”

“Well, fourth-cousin Sascha, I suppose that’ll be up to you.”

“Oh.” Chuck straightened his shoulders and tried to look Russian. When they stepped out into the hotel hallway, a short man with a bandaged thumb immediately pounced.

“What are you doing here? You’re not authorized to be here.”

Chuck borrowed a page from Sarah’s book and adopted a disdainful sneer. “I am here to visit my fourth-cousin Grigory. I believe you may know him as the Butcher?”

The guard’s eyes widened. “My apologies! Would you like me to escort you to Mr. Keylov’s room?”

“We can find it without your help, thanks.”

Before Chuck could move around the odious guard, however, the sentry slapped a hand on his chest, halting him in place. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your names.”

That could be problematic, as Grigory hadn’t shouted a family name when he had greeted Chuck the day before. But remembering how Sarah handled these problems, Chuck raised his chin, stared down his nose at the guard and said, “Sascha Klebb.”

Casey coughed.

“And this is my associate, Boris Badenov,” Chuck started to say, but Casey’s growl, again subsonic, again scary, made him finish up with, “ski. Boris Badenovski. Now, are you done interrogating us or would you perhaps like to know what we had for breakfast as well?”

“No, no, sir.” 

Cowed, the guard stepped asid, and Chuck gave him one last haughty look as he swept past, Casey following. The instant they rounded the corner, Chuck let out the breath he’d been holding in a gush. “Holy crap. I can’t believe that worked!”

“Yeah, well, keep your voice down, moron.” Casey looked as though he was a bit put out that the ploy had worked, obviously spoiling for a fight as he was. But he shot Chuck a look. “He’s really called the Butcher?” 

“It sounded ominous.” Chuck shrugged.

Casey snorted.

“What? Butchers cut things. With knives. My girlfriend aside, that’s the definition of ominous. Here’s the suite. Uh, how are we going to do this?”

“We knock, we tell the frog to get the hell off of U.S. soil, our job is done.”

“Simple, elegant. I like this plan.” Chuck took a deep breath as Casey knocked on the door of Ilsa’s suite. What would happen now, he suspected, was the reason Sarah had told him to go with Casey. The look on Casey’s face told Chuck that the other man would have no problem whatsoever causing an international incident or five.

“One moment,” a woman’s voice called through the door. A few seconds later, they heard footsteps near. “Is that you, Victor?”

Casey waited until the door had opened. “Wrong boyfriend, sweetheart,” he said, and Chuck had to admire his opening line. Until, that was, he turned and discovered that Ilsa must have just gotten out of the shower. As in, his stunned brain informed him, she was wearing nothing but a towel. There wasn’t much time for follow-up commentary, as Casey shoved Ilsa back into the room with one hand and hauled Chuck inside with the other. He slammed the door closed behind the three of them. “Hello. Or should it be _bonjour_?”

Ilsa’s face immediately fell into stony lines. “Hello to you, too, John. Or what is it you go by these days?”

“He’s still Casey,” Chuck said, figuring he should be helpful and concentrate on something besides looking at Ilsa’s legs or chest. The towel revealed quite a bit of both. He kept his gaze firmly on Ilsa’s face. “Also, I’m Chu—Charles Carmichael. I’m a coworker of Casey’s.”

Ilsa looked less than impressed. “NSA, too?”

“Uh, sort of. It’s complicated.”

“Sounds like it.” 

Chuck was getting desperate. “Look, would you mind putting on some clothing or something? Please? Not for my sake, but my girlfriend’s probably on her way up and she’s…” He felt that it was understandable when he trailed off. He had a hard time describing Sarah on a good day, with her mercurial moods.

Casey made a noise in the back of his throat. “Get dressed. Your flight’s in an hour.”

“My flight?” 

“DGSE needs permission to operate on American soil, sweetheart, and you don’t have it. Ergo, buh-bye.”

Instead of getting angry, as Chuck half-feared she might, Ilsa went pale. “What? No! You can’t do that! Not when we’re _this_ close—”

“Should’ve thought of that before you came into my territory.” Casey folded his arms over his chest. “And for God’s sake, you’re disturbing the nerd. Put something on.”

“You can’t do this to me, not now. I just need a little more time—”

“They hacked your file,” Chuck said. “Your Interpol file.”

“How do you know that?”

“Well, because I hacked it, too.”

Ilsa’s eyes widened. “You did _what_? My file is private, you had no right!”

Chuck threw up his hands in frustration. “Don’t you think there are slightly bigger priorities here?”

“Watch it,” Casey warned, grabbing Chuck by the shoulder and jerking him back. Annoyed now, Chuck bit back the instinctive question, wondering why Casey was the only one that got to argue with Ilsa, and fell silent with a nod. “Ilsa, the nerd’s right. If your cover’s blown, we need to worry about that.”

She relented with a nod, though she understandably didn’t look too happy about it. “How much time do I have?”

“Uncertain. They don’t know we came to see you, but we do need to move.” Casey’s hand hadn’t left his gun since they’d come into the hotel room, and Chuck wasn’t sure if it was for Ilsa or because of her. Before Casey had snapped at him, he would have said Casey was intending solely to intimidate the Frenchwoman. Apparently not. Even the Tin-Man had gotten a heart in the end, after all.

“Do the nerd a favor and put some clothes on,” Casey said, moving away from the door and grabbing Ilsa by the arm. “Chuck, keep an eye out. Let me know if anybody’s coming.”

“Ten-four,” Chuck said, and pressed his face to the peephole.

Behind him, he heard Ilsa say, “You can turn around now, John.”

“I know better than to let you out of my sight and it’s not like it’s nothing I haven’t seen before, sister.”

“I’m not your sister.”

Before Chuck could really process that thought and all of its sticky possibilities, his phone blared Sarah’s ringtone. He in his pocket. “Hey, Sarah.”

“Have you found Ilsa?”

“Yeah, we’re in her room right now. She’s, ah, changing.”

“Okay. I’ve got an FBI team standing by on the sixth floor. Will you have any trouble extracting Ilsa?”

The green-eyed girlfriend monster never surfaced, thankfully, and Chuck breathed out a sigh of relief. “We’re okay right now,” he said. Louder, he added, “As long as Casey doesn’t cause any international incidents with the French, that is.”

“I heard that, Bartowski.”

“Good, I meant you to. I’m not the one watching some poor, defenseless woman change.”

“You’d better not be,” Sarah said.

“I _just_ said—” Belatedly, Chuck broke off, realizing that only danger lay ahead on that path. He cleared his throat. “I’m not, for the record. Got my back turned and everything. And _also_ for the record, we’re okay. We got past the guard just fine, and once Ilsa’s finished changing, we’ll join you on the sixth floor.”

“Okay. Turn on your tracker.”

“I hate that thing. It eats up my battery.” Still Chuck drew his phone away from his ear and enabled the program that would allow Sarah’s phone to track his location to within three feet. “Okay. It’s on.”

“Good. Now, hurry.”

Chuck hung up. “What’s the story here?” he asked, still keeping his face plastered to the door and the peephole. He had a feeling if he turned around, there would be two government agents mad at him for different reasons, and Ilsa of course. “Like, what do we say if we run into Ivan the Terrible Hall Monitor again?”

“Could just shoot him,” Casey said.

“And the _helpful_ suggestions now, perhaps?”

“We shoot him quietly. Where’s Walker?”

“Sixth floor stairwell. She says she’ll meet us there.”

“Good. Let’s move it, Frenchie.”

“ _Va te faire foutre_!”

“Man,” Chuck remarked, who didn’t know French, but did know what an insult sounded like in any language, “if that’s the way you two talk to each other regularly, I have no desire to hear what pillow talk might sound like.”

This time, he had both of them glaring at him, but neither said anything, thankfully, as they shouldered their way past him. He brought up the rear, closing Ilsa’s hotel room door behind him. Ilsa hadn’t packed a bag, which he supposed was a good thing, as it might give their going on the lam away. Casey’s quasi-dead ex-girlfriend was actually very pretty, he reflected, not for the first time. When he’d flashed on her initially, it had been sort of a shock, though it shouldn’t have been. Hadn’t he cracked to Sarah a time or two about how attractive Casey was? 

Wasn't it strange, the turns life took?

They made it most of the way down the hallway, though he could feel his own shoulders tightening with every step that brought them closer to freedom and a clean getaway with Ilsa, and he could see Casey likewise tensing. Ilsa, for her part, was probably the best at keeping up appearances of the three of them, for she looked completely unaffected by all of it, though Chuck did see her glance at her watch once, almost nervously. They rounded the final corner; Chuck could see the door to the stairwell, where Sarah and her team no doubt waited, though he couldn't see her face in the window. He had exactly two seconds to wonder why before his phone rang with the Red Alert sound effect from the original Star Trek TV series.

Casey pulled up short at the noise. Chuck, however, reacted immediately. He lunged forward and shoved Ilsa to the side, right into an alcove that led to two hotel rooms. Then he whirled, tranq gun up.

He was just quick enough; the minute he turned, Victor Federov, Cousin Grigory, Ivan the Terrible, and three others rounded the corner.

And they were all holding semi-automatic rifles.

“Oh, hell,” Casey said for both of them.


	47. A Genius to Rival Rambaldi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I really don’t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you’re alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you’re quiet, you’re not living. You’ve got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively. — Mel Brooks

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**GRAND SAVILLE ROOM 707**   
**15:37 PST**

“So, this is cozy.” Chuck leaned forward until his chin rested against his chest. He would have leaned back, but he had tried, and had knocked heads with Casey so hard that the other man had growled. “Is this normal? I mean, despite living in Siberia, I know nothing about Russians. Do they usually tie up people like they’re going to drop them on the railroad tracks and blow the train brakes?”

“Your mouth is moving,” Casey said. “You might want to see to that.”

Chuck fell silent, but unfortunately, being quiet allowed his brain more time to think and he’d already counted the number of horrible ways that he and Casey could die. He had no desire to revisit that list. So he eyed the guards left in the room, all of whom wore tailored suits that told Chuck their drug and gun running businesses were going well. They all carried semi-automatics. “Hey,” he said to them, wishing he spoke better Russian—or Russian at all, really. “Is this normal? Do you, like, tie all of your captives up like this?”

“Shut up,” the guard said in a thick accent.

“I’m gonna take that as a yes.” When Victor Federov and his flunkies had come around the corner, there hadn’t been time for Chuck and Casey to dive for cover. To give Ilsa a chance to get away, they’d come forward and put down their guns. Chuck imagined that Sarah was somewhere cursing both of them, but it couldn’t be helped.

At least, he _hoped_ she was somewhere cursing him. The fact that she’d sent the warning to his phone meant she could be in trouble, too.

“Knock it off,” Casey said.

He raised his head. “Knock what off?”

“You’re twitching, and it’s pissing me off. So knock it off.”

“Shut up, both of you,” the guard closest to Casey said.

Chuck wanted to point out that he expected better hospitality at the most expensive hotel in Los Angeles, but in what was probably a moment of sheer mind reading, Casey jerked. His back hit Chuck’s since they were hogtied back to back like something out of an old Saturday morning western with, of all things, the ropes that held the curtains. The NSA agent might consider the move a light tap, but it took Chuck a few seconds to get his breath back. He took the hint.

He hoped Sarah was okay. They hadn’t heard gunfire. That had to be a good thing, right?

Even so, most of the Russians were out searching for Ilsa and any accomplices that might have come with Chuck and Casey, which was worrying. Or, at least, he assumed that that was what was happening. He didn’t know how Ilsa had done it, but by the time the Russians had neutralized Chuck and Casey, she had vanished completely from the alcove. 

“Great,” Casey had grumbled as they’d been hauled to Victor Federov’s rooms and tied in place with the curtain pulls. “We let the Frenchie get away.”

Chuck suspected Casey was rather pleased about that, but he kept silent on the subject.

At least there hadn’t been any Russkie jokes yet. They also hadn’t been shot. The two may have been related.

“So, O Major, my Major, how do we get out of this one? Is there some secret NSA trick to get out of these ropes?” Chuck asked, keeping his voice low. 

“Working on it,” Casey said. “And have a little more respect for Whitman.”

“Yes, sir.” Chuck would have given a sarcastic salute, but his hands were pinned to his side. Behind him, Casey let out a noise that was halfway to a growl, but apparently decided to let it go. They remained silent, the bored guards watching. Chuck spent his time wondering what Sarah was up to. Was she going to drop in from the ceiling tiles? Ninja her way in through the window? Fight off a legion of bad guys with Katanas?

“Chuck.” Casey’s voice was low almost to the point of being inaudible. “Listen close, but don’t act like you’re listening.”

Chuck deliberately looked up at the ceiling tiles as if there were something interesting up there. “What’s up?” He tried to speak without moving his lips. The words came out a bit slurred, but he’d sounded more incoherent in the mornings at the apartment pre-coffee, and Casey had never had any problem understanding him then.

“Any slack on your side? Move slowly.”

It felt absurd, but Chuck began to wiggle. “Not really.”

“Damn it.”

An idea struck. “You ever run a three-legged race, Casey?”

“Why the hell would I? What’s wrong with the two legs I got?”

“Point, but isn’t there some principle we could apply here, maybe? If we work together…”

“I don’t know. I—” Casey broke off as the door opened and Federov came back in. The crime boss, however, only said something in Russian to the guards and vanished into the hallway again. Both agents watched him go.

“What’d he say, Ca—Badenovski?” Chuck asked in a normal voice, so the guards wouldn’t think he was being too quiet after talking for pretty much the entire time he’d been tied up.

“Shut up, moron,” Casey said. 

“It hurts me when you stereotype me, Casey.”

Chuck felt Casey twitch, and he nearly jolted when he realized Casey was suppressing a laugh. A second later, the too-quiet talking started again. “They’re looking for Ilsa and ‘a blonde.’”

“Sarah,” Chuck breathed.

“Rest easy, she’s fine.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Probably calling in everything up to a stealth bomber and misappropriating government resources like nothing else for your skinny ass, but fine.”

“I highly doubt Sarah is going to turn L.A. into a nuclear wasteland just because of me.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Bar—Cousin Sascha.”

Chuck almost shook his head, but remembered that the guards had no idea they were communicating. Instead, he sighed under his breath. “I can’t believe,” he said, “that it was my name that gave us away. Stupid Cousin Grigory. Did it never occur to them that I might have taken Rosa’s name when I married her?”

“What the hell are you blathering about?”

“I don’t know, anything to distract myself from the fact that a Russian oligarch is currently using the upholstery to tie us up and my girlfriend might be on the phone getting nuclear codes to come save us.”

“Now you see what I have to worry about every damn day.”

“Every damn day you get to work in an underground government base with every type of weapon imaginable. Your life must really suck, Casey.”

He felt Casey jerk again, another laugh. “Any ideas other than some doofus picnic game?”

Something started to form in the back of Chuck’s mind. “Maybe. You think you can get us out of here if I get us loose?”

“If we have the element of surprise.”

“Gotcha. Should we wait for Sarah?”

“Negative. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

Chuck slowly turned his head, eying each of the guards in turn. Two of them picked their fingernails, obviously bored. One sneaked furtive looks at the wide-screen TV on the wall. None of them paid Chuck and Casey any attention. Confident in that, Chuck began studying the hotel suite. 

The door ahead of him led to Victor Federov’s bedroom, and it was closed; therefore, not a viable escape option. They’d been tied up back to back and left on stools beside the couch, in the center of the room. Not much cover, he deduced—the couch, if they could get it between them and the guards, and the kitchenette, with its waist-high countertop that blocked it off from the rest of the room. Chuck could see only two egress points: the balcony and the door. There were two guards between them and each of the points. Chuck was more worried about the ones between him and the door, as he didn’t fancy going for a swim, assuming they survived the trip to the pool.

“Casey,” he said, speaking lowly again. “I think I can get us loose.”

“Yeah?”

“We’ll have to move quickly, but on the count of three, get to your feet, standing up as straight as you can.”

“Got it.”

“One…two…three!”

The guards immediately turned as Chuck and Casey shot to their feet. “Casey, now! Jump!”

Casey obeyed, possibly because he didn’t think about who was giving the order. As the other man jumped, Chuck forced his own weight down. He splayed his legs wide like a hockey goalie going for the save, so that Casey wouldn’t land on his calves, and dropped. He felt his upper arms erupt with flame as the friction literally burned, but he popped clear of the rope and immediately rolled forward.

Casey didn’t miss a beat. He kicked out, foot swinging in a wide arc. Chuck heard the thud of the foot hitting the guard’s jaw, but he didn’t stick around to find out. If he stayed still too long, the guards would have a target, and they were already far too open in the middle of the room. To buy himself time, he snatched up the remote from the coffee table and flung it at the second guard’s head. By the time it hit, Chuck had already leap-frogged to his feet and was scrambling toward the door.

No luck. Two guards blocked his way. Chuck swerved mid-run, ducking forward just as a guard tried to grab him. The breeze ruffled his hair as the guard missed. Chuck spun in place and back-tracked, dodging around the guard again. Games of freeze tag and their tactics really did stick forever, he had time to think as he dodged yet again. 

Unfortunately, he hadn’t considered the guard’s buddy. Something grabbed him from behind in a huge bear hug, pinning his arms to his side. “Casey!” Chuck shouted, struggling. 

Again, he was out of luck. A quick glance told him Casey was fighting off two guards of his own.

“Hold still!” the guard holding Chuck grunted.

Chuck only fought harder, especially when the guard he’d dodged picked himself off of the ground and began heading toward Chuck. Across the room, Casey let out a grunt; apparently, he was faring just as well as Chuck.

The guard in front of Chuck pulled his gun from his holster. Chuck struggled anew. 

“No guns!” the guard holding Chuck said. “Too loud!”

“Very well, we do this Russian way.” The guard holstered his gun and pushed up his sleeves. “No need to worry about his face, eh? Is not pretty anyway.”

“Hey, I happen to think I have a very pretty face,” Chuck said, trying to jerk free. He almost stilled when he realized what he said. “Uh, I meant manly. Manly, manly face.”

“Is okay. Won’t recognize it when I’m done,” the guard said, actually pulling on thick, ornate rings like an old school bouncer. 

“Hell,” Chuck said. The guard had a point, and Chuck discovered right then that he was fonder of his face than he had thought. In a move of more desperation than finesse, he kicked up with both legs and shoved his feet into the guard’s chest. That guard tumbled back with a curse. Chuck and his guard went backward with more of a shout. The impact jarred Chuck, but it surprised his guard into loosening his hold, and Chuck needed no more invitation than that. He rolled free, his hand darting out and closing around something before he realized what it was. And then he was running, nearly tripping as he tried to gain traction on the carpet. It didn’t matter where, just as long as it was _away_.

As a result, he ran to the tiny kitchenette, blocked off from the rest of the hotel room by that countertop. Casey broke free of his own guards. As one, the two of them each vaulted over the counter, ducking before the Russians could stop caring at the idea that guns were too loud.

“Casey!” Chuck slid the gun he’d lifted off of his guard across the kitchen tiles.

“Excellent. Stay down.” Casey snatched up the gun and rose to his feet, aiming at the nearest guard. If Chuck craned his neck just right, he could see the NSA agent smirk. “Don’t move.”

There was a curse, possibly from the guard whose gun Chuck had stolen. 

“Drop the gun,” one of the guards said, “or we shoot!”

“Not in this lifetime, Commie.” Casey adjusted his stance. “You drop _your_ gun.”

There was a pause as everybody in the room considered this. Finally, Chuck, huddled against the counter, voiced what everybody was thinking. “Are we in a Mexican standoff with the Russians, Casey?”

“There’s four of us, and only two of you,” a guard said.

“Excellent math skills, Sherlock.” Casey’s smirk was pure sarcasm now. “But these firearms are just so darn loud, aren’t they? Would hate to wake the neighbors.”

“Drop the gun!”

“Not happening, Pinko.”

It was only a matter of time, Chuck figured, until the Russians remembered that they had at least one, if not a legion, of cops in their pockets, cops that would be willing to get them out of any firearms violations if they did shoot Chuck and Casey. So while Casey quipped and the guards waited for backup, Chuck began to search everything he could from his vantage point. The counters were clean, with only a washrag, a coffee service tray, and remains of a cold-cut sub on one, and some brochures on another. No luck there. Chuck edged forward and moving quickly, moving quietly, began to rifle through the counter under the sink.

“Damn,” he said to himself as Casey cracked a joke that would have made Gorbachev cry, “how much do these guys _drink_?”

He nearly shoved aside one of the many bottles of vodka to try and see if there was anything in the back that could help him. His hand froze halfway.

An idea formed.

A horrible, horrible idea.

“I’m so going to hell for this,” he said, and grabbed the first bottle of vodka. His hands were shaking a little as he wrenched off the cap and, still moving quietly, scooted across the kitchen floor. He could only hope none of the Russians noticed his hand sneak up and grab the sugar packets from the coffee tray, and the washrag.

Just as he finished his ministrations, the door to the hotel suite burst open. Victor hadn’t returned, but the other guards had.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Chuck said, popping to his feet, hands empty, before the shouting could begin. “Everybody, let’s just calm down, okay? No need for violence here!”

“Says who?” Casey and one of the guards asked at the same time.

Chuck gave Casey an intent look and hoped the other man could read his thoughts. “They outnumber us six to two.” He glanced at the door as it opened again. Not Victor, but another hungover Russian. He sympathized. “Make that seven.”

“I’m not putting my gun down,” Casey said.

“Let’s face it, they’ve won, we’ve lost. It’s time to fall on our swords.”

Casey scowled. “A little gunplay and you start running for the hills, Charlene?”

“Charlene, because I’m a girl? How original.” Chuck turned to the guards, keeping his hands in the air. They had been watching the back and forth with mild interest. “Look, there are more of you than there are of us. This isn’t going to end without getting messy, and I don’t like messy. We’ll surrender, I promise, just…don’t hit the face, okay? Not my face. Anywhere but my—” He realized there was a part of his anatomy he was just as fond of, and broke off by clearing his throat. “Not my face, okay?”

“Very well,” the leader of the guards said. “We accept your terms. No face.”

“Hey, _I_ didn’t say I accepted the nerd’s terms!” Casey said.

“We can work with this,” the guard said. He turned to his buddies and gave a little laugh, jerking his head at Casey. “His face, we can hit.”

“Hey!”

“It’s only fair, Casey,” Chuck said. “You didn’t agree to the terms.”

He wondered if anybody else heard Casey’s growled “Bartowski” except him and possibly any small creatures in the vicinity.

“But yeah,” Chuck said, and stretched both hands forward, offering his wrists to be tied up, “we’ll go quietly. With honor. Like the, uh, honorable people we are.”

The nearest guard moved to wrap the rope around Chuck’s wrists, despite the fact that Casey shifted and pointed the gun straight at that guard, not relenting. Chuck waited until the rope had almost touched his skin before he took a step back, pretending reluctance.

“One thing,” he said, hoping he came across as more of a dissembling nerd than he sounded at the moment. “Let’s not front here. You’re going to kill me, and I don’t know if it’s Russian custom, but here, we grant a last request before we deep-six somebody.”

“We do that,” one of the guards said, sounding affronted. Chuck heard mutterings about, “Not just a bunch of communists” from the back, and figured his time was short.

So he plowed on. “In that case, I have a request.”

“What? What is it?”

“A cigarette? I am jonesing for a—for a drag. It’s been hours, man.” Chuck put real desperation in his voice, aware that Casey was probably doing his hardest not to stare at the fact that he’d essentially grown a third arm. “Just one smoke, that’s all.”

The guard looked around at his buddies, puzzled. Meeting only shrugs, the guard reached into his own pocket and withdrew a pack of cigarettes, offering it and a lighter to Chuck.

“Thanks,” Chuck said. He screwed up his courage, hoped it didn’t look like he didn’t have the first clue what he was doing, and put the cigarette between his lips. His hands were still shaking as he lit the tip. Please, he thought, please don’t cough, please don’t cough, please don’t cough.

Of course, he coughed. And his eyes watered.

Oh, God, that was _foul_.

Still coughing, he doubled over, wheezing. And even though his vision had blurred, he wasted no time. He flicked the lighter on and lit the washrag. As was his luck, it took a second for the flames to catch. He hadn’t soaked very much of the rag first.

“Are you okay, man?” a guard asked, since Chuck had dropped out of their line of sight behind the counter. “They’re just Marlboros.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said, and coughed. He cleared his throat and pounded his free hand against his chest. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I promise. Also—”

He straightened. And every Russian in the room—and Casey—froze when they saw what he was holding. Chuck’s voice sounded different when he said, “Here’s how it’s going to be. I’m not unaware of the irony of throwing this at you even though the Soviet Union is no more, but if you let Casey and me go, I won’t.”

There was a pause as the guards looked at each other in confusion. The one nearest him voiced the question: “Won’t what?”

“Throw it at you,” Chuck said, his brow crinkling. “What part of that was hard to—never mind. You let us go, I don’t throw this. If you don’t put down your weapons on the ground in the next ten seconds, I throw this. If you try to come after us, I throw this. Are you getting the picture yet?”

He really hoped they didn’t hear his knees knocking together, as that would be counterproductive to the image of the badass he was trying to portray.

None of the guards moved. They were staring in fascination at the flicker of flame working its way up the washrag Chuck had taken from their counter.

“Are you _nuts_?” Casey said under his breath.

“It’s possible,” Chuck said. He turned toward the Russians, took a deep breath, and said, “My offer expires in ten seconds. Nine. Eight.”

At seven, two of the guards set their guns down.

At six, Chuck began to sweat harder.

At four, he began to pray.

At three, two more guards joined the first two.

At two, another did.

At one, Chuck felt a bead of sweat slide between his shoulder blades and down his back.

The last two guards set their guns on the ground.

Chuck’s knees dissolved, but he kept his back straight. “Excellent choice. We’ll be leaving now. Sorry to take time out of your day, gentlemen.” He belatedly realized he was still holding the cigarette and hastily began to search for an ash tray.

Casey grunted, stole the cigarette from Chuck, and crushed it under his foot. “Move it, moron,” he said quietly. He clamped a hand down on Chuck’s shoulder to guide him from the room.

They headed for the door, Chuck fighting bone-melting relief every step of the way. How had none of them called his bluff? Sure, he’d put sugar in the Molotov cocktail to help it spread, but he didn’t really want to blow anybody up, even if they were planning to kill him. So to just walk away without having to use this new, scarily-aflame weapon in his hand…

He’d spoken too soon. They barely cleared the counters, heading into the main part of the hotel room and toward the door, when the door itself opened.

Victor Federov filed in with two men, this time armed with submachine guns.

Chuck and Casey stopped in their tracks.

Victor’s eyes raked over both of them, pausing at the gun in Casey’s hand, and finally stopping on the flaming rag atop the bottle of vodka in Chuck’s. He went still, silence fell, time stretched to a breaking point and past it, and Victor simply turned to the men with him and said, “Shoot them.”

“Holy sh—”

Chuck barely felt himself go backwards. He was vaguely aware that something had grabbed him across the chest, something like an iron band. But the minute the words came out of Victor’s mouth, it seemed like reality disconnected itself. He watched in absurd slow motion as Victor’s guards raised those scary, almost insect-like rifles, aiming them at Casey, at Chuck.

If even one of them didn’t miss, Chuck would be almost as good a colander as Sonny Corleone.

He dropped the Molotov cocktail. It fell in the same timeless loop as everything else, tumbling end over end. The flames even looked pretty.

The band over Chuck’s chest tightened. He felt himself stumble, his foot dragging, but it didn’t seem to matter because he was still being pulled backwards at a frightening speed, even in the half-paced reality that now made up his world.

The guns continued to swing upwards, those muzzles growing larger and scarier with every millimeter.

The bottle thudded as it hit the toe of Chuck’s shoe and dropped to the carpet, but it didn’t break.

Chuck, and Casey, hit open air.

He would never recall precisely how it happened, save that one moment he was going backward and there was a jerk, and then there was nothing. His stomach imploded and jumped into his throat, and he had one wild second to look around and realize, So this is what it feels like to fall off of a building.

And then, of course, he was too busy falling.

Time slammed back into place, hard. He was dropping through empty air, his stomach upside down, his organs gone, nothing but a pit of sheer terror inside. He might have let out a scream. The ground was coming toward him, fast, alarmingly fast, too fast—

No. Not the ground. The pool. Casey had thrown them both toward the Grand Saville’s giant pool. He had only a split second to process that thought, to make his body rigid, arms at his sides, toes pointed. From this angle, the pool seemed impossibly blue, almost serene…

The impact hurt like _hell_. 

It was like sprinting into somebody at a dead run, but far, far worse. He went from open space, heart clinging to his uvula, body suspended, to crashing through what felt like a brick wall. The deceleration as he hit the water threatened to rip him apart at the edges. He didn’t hit the pool bottom, but he abruptly stopped knowing which way was up. Everything around him was blue and blurry, and there wasn’t any _air_. He clawed blindly, fighting to get to oxygen even though he had no idea where it could be.

Something latched around his arm. Panic almost made him suck in an instinctual gasp, and he immediately began to struggle. Thanks to the water, he couldn’t _see_ anything. So he lashed out, and kicked, fighting an unseen enemy. Whatever had a hold on him, however, wasn’t having any of that. They tugged, relentlessly, pulling on him.

His head broke the surface. Even as he sucked in his first breath, he was still fighting, still trashing around even though his limbs felt like lead and his head felt light and his shoes dragged at his feet. He wasn’t going to make it this far just to be taken by the Russians—

The grip on his arm changed to a head-lock. Chuck continued to thrash, fighting blindly with the water in his eyes, until he heard, “Bartowski! Relax, it’s just me!”

Abruptly, he stopped. “Oh. Uh, right.”

“You okay? Got your faculties about you?”

“What? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I’m good. I—” Chuck rubbed his eyes and looked around. A glance up at the balcony, the same one Casey had tossed them both over, suddenly made him light-headed.

“Let’s move. They’re not going to be stunned by our stupidity for too long, and I’d rather not be sitting ducks.” Casey was already hauling ass to the side of the pool, as if they hadn’t made the most death-defying leap in the history of the planet. Chuck belatedly hastened to follow. His entire body was shaking, huge quivers that had nothing to do with cold.

And it wasn’t over yet, he saw. He glanced up at the balcony again. “Casey, we’ve got company!”

Victor Federov stood on the same balcony Chuck and Casey had just abandoned, a gun in hand. Even from this distance, that gun looked terrifying. The Intersect hadn’t said anything about Victor being a crack shot, but Chuck didn’t like his odds.

Around the pool, those who had been enjoying the oddly warm February day began to scatter. Chuck and Casey’s plummet hadn’t made them scream, but there were shrieks of terror now. 

Chuck swam faster, hoping that Victor was a terrible shot, hoping that his absurd streak of luck would hold up, that it would allow him to get to the edge of the pool and maybe to safety. He almost didn’t hear the familiar thunder of combat boots on pavement, but what happened next was unmistakable. 

“FBI!” somebody shouted through a megaphone. “Freeze! Put your gun down and your hands in the air!”

Chuck and Casey stopped in shock. Fifteen or so black-clad figures appeared beside the pool, their guns pointed at the seventh floor balcony. And leading the way, carrying AR-15s and kitted out like the FBI agents, were Sarah and Ilsa. Why Ilsa had a gun, Chuck didn’t know, but he didn’t think he’d ever been so glad to see Sarah in his life. His eyebrows shot into his hairline.

Beside Chuck, Casey apparently forgot to keep treading, and bobbed for a second, almost disappearing under the surface. The NSA agent quickly regained his stroke, looking a little wet and a little more gob smacked but ultimately fine. Overhead, Victor Federov evidently decided fifteen FBI agents were too much for him. He set the gun down. Down by the pool, half of the FBI squad broke for the hotel at a run to go arrest Federov.

Sarah, meanwhile, crouched and gave her partners a wide-eyed look. Victor was apparently the FBI’s problem now, as Ilsa and Sarah paid them no heed. “What the hell are you doing,” Sarah said, “in there?”

“How else? We jumped,” Chuck said, and hauled himself over the lip of the pool. He pulled himself to his feet and marveled that he could stand at all, thanks to a combination of relief and fading adrenaline. “They were going to shoot us, so we jumped.” 

He looked up to see all of the color drain from Sarah’s face. “ _What_?”

“Well, it was either get wet or get shot and possibly blown up thanks to numbskull here,” Casey said as he climbed out. He hadn’t taken his eyes off of Ilsa. 

“We chose to get wet.” Chuck saw Sarah almost teeter off of her feet as she looked from the balcony, seemingly miles overhead, and back to her partners. Chuck read her face an instant before she acted. “No,” he said, holding up a hand. “Stop, don’t. I’m all—”

Spoke too late, he thought as Sarah practically tackled him in her relief.

“Wet,” he finished, and sighed as that didn’t stop Sarah at all. “Figures.”

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**GRAND SAVILLE PARKING LOT**   
**16:27 PST**

“I still don’t get why you two lunatics didn’t wait for me,” Sarah said as Chuck huddled in a blanket. Though he’d insisted that he was fine, dropping seven stories into the water was apparently something that required an extensive medical check, which meant Awesome had shown up in Castle’s ambulance and had done extensive checks over Chuck and Casey, neither of whom wanted the attention. At least Sarah had stopped hovering, as she’d been on the phone for the past twenty minutes. “We just went to get more backup and were almost there. There wasn’t really any need for you to join the swim team.”

“We didn’t know that,” Chuck said. “And despite Casey’s assertions, I was not at all close to blowing us up.”

“You dropped a Molotov cocktail on your own foot.”

“But the bottle didn’t break. It was carpet.”

“I never know what a day with you is going to be like,” Sarah said, but she wasn’t grumbling now. She lowered herself until she was sitting on the back of the ambulance next to him. After Awesome had checked him over, Chuck had chosen to sit there quietly and stay out of the way while Sarah dealt with things and Awesome called Ellie. It had been a good vantage point to watch the FBI lead away half of the Russian mob, and to observe Casey and Ilsa’s absurd dance where they talked to each other without talking to each other.

Sarah nodded over at the other couple now as she sat. Casey was leaning back against one of the pillars by the hotel’s front door, his arms folded across his chest and his face inscrutable while Ilsa spoke. “What’s going on with them?”

“I don’t know,” Chuck said. “I can’t read lips, but I think they’re working things out. As you put it yesterday, she hasn’t slapped him, and that’s a good sign.”

“It is.”

“What did the bosses say?”

“Oh, that wasn’t them. I think Graham’s playing golf today, and Beckman’s got other plans, so neither of them answered when I called. I was talking to the FBI techs—they seized Federov’s assets, including the plane they were supposed to take on their honeymoon.”

“Oh?” Since something in Sarah’s tone told him there was more to the story, he gestured for her to go on.

“It seems Victor was planning to fake his own death—and plot Ilsa’s real death at the same time—in some kind of plane crash. They had the black box already recorded.” Sarah tilted her head, possibly trying to eavesdrop on Casey and Ilsa. “Looks like you and Casey were supposed to have been on that plane, too.”

“If you hadn’t come along,” Chuck said, mustering up a smile for her.

“Or you hadn’t done your little swan dive.”

“Hey, I’m okay. The awesomest doctor on the planet even said so.”

“You’re insane,” Sarah said, but she was laughing out of what he suspected might be sheer relief. “For both your little vodka bomb trick and for letting Casey haul you out a window. Where on earth did you learn how to make a Molotov cocktail?”

“From Senor Molotov himself, of course.” Chuck flashed his sunniest grin. “Or, um, Wikipedia.”

“When would you have ever—you know what? I’m probably better off not knowing.”

“Probably wisest. Awesome’s telling Ellie about Casey’s and my little ‘swan dive’ as you called it, so expect the Ellie-pocalypse later.”

“Can’t wait.”

Sarah and Chuck looked up as one as Casey broke off from Ilsa. It was impossible to read his face and tell if the conversation had gone well. But that was pretty par for the course with Casey, Chuck reflected. He had two settings, really: neutral angry and angry.

This was more of a neutral angry, which lifted Chuck’s hopes a bit.

Casey squinted at Sarah for a moment before abruptly turning toward Chuck. “Bartowski, can I talk to you in private?”

“I’ll go try calling Beckman again,” Sarah said, and abandoned the field, though she shot Chuck an exaggerated grin and wiggled her eyebrows as she left. 

Chuck had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “What’s up, Casey?”

“Two things. First, I left something for you on your desk at Castle.” Casey scratched the back of his head. Like Chuck, he hadn’t changed clothes, though he hadn’t taken the blanket Awesome had offered. “Friend of mine finally got in touch. It’s about that info you requested back in D.C.”

It took Chuck a second to put it together. “About Phillip Dartmoor?”

“Yeah, left it on your desk. Manila envelope. Didn’t look at it yet.”

“Well, thank you, Casey.”

“And for the second thing.” Casey suddenly seemed to have difficulty meeting Chuck’s eyes. “Any chance you could make yourself scarce?”

“Right now?” Chuck asked, his eyes widening. He looked around at the FBI personnel still crowding the parking lot. “Why? Does somebody suspect I’m the Intersect?”

“No, that’s not precisely what I meant.” Casey cleared his throat. Chuck knew for sure now that he wasn’t imagining things: Casey was uncomfortable. “Can you make yourself scarce later? From the apartment?”

“From the—oh.” Chuck’s eyes immediately cut to where Ilsa was making a big show of not watching them, a few feet away. “Oh-ho. I guess that’s the end of all of this frog talk, huh?”

“Shut it, Bartowski.” There was a pause, and Casey sighed. “We may have worked things out.”

“Excellent. Good for you, Casey. And it’s no problem, I can stay at Castle or something. Place is all yours.”

Casey surprised him by raising an eyebrow. “At Castle? You serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? We keep some very comfortable cots there.” He’d sneaked down for catnaps on those cots during his lunch break a few times whenever he’d been up too late playing video games with Morgan, or working on his computer. If Casey wanted the apartment to himself, that was the perfect opportunity for Chuck to test some _Mass Effect_ on his huge, high-def office monitors.

What Graham and Beckman didn’t know was going on behind their firewall couldn’t hurt them, right?

“Okay, then,” Casey said, shaking his head.

“What?”

“Nothing. Thanks, Bar—uh, Chuck.” Casey awkwardly patted him on the shoulder and started to head back to Ilsa. He seemed to remember something halfway there, and turned. “It’s going to be awhile. We’re going out to dinner first, so you know, no rush or anything.”

“Thanks, Casey.”

“Good work today, Chuck,” Casey said, and left.

Sarah reappeared, holding two cups of coffee obviously nicked from the lobby. “Just talked to Devon,” she said. “Casey’s going to take off with Ilsa, and we’ll ride back in the ambulance.”

“There’s words you never want to hear,” Chuck said, but obligingly climbed to his feet.

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**BACHELOR PAD**   
**17:48 PST**

Chuck pushed open the door to his place and nearly had to grab his chest to make sure his heart hadn’t stopped. In the haze of all of the events of the day—waking up in Sarah’s bedroom, discovering the truth about Ilsa, threatening a bunch of Russians with flame and vodka, landing in the pool—he had nearly managed to forget that there had been a marathon drinking session at the Bachelor Pad, but the evidence was here in spades. They hadn’t turned off the video game before they’d rushed off, so the TV displayed the “idle” screen, which leaked blue light onto the cesspool of bottles, food wrappers, gun cleaning kits, and the full ashtray that had once been their coffee table. 

The bottle of Jim Beam lay on its side, where one of them must have knocked it over on their way out the door, and the whole place reeked of the spilled alcohol. Thankfully, the bottle had been mostly empty.

And in a few hours, Casey would be bringing Ilsa home to this.

“Well, great,” Chuck said. He’d intended only to grab a quick shower, pack an overnight bag, and head to Castle. Now it looked like he would have to add tidying. It really was the least he could do, as Casey had saved both their lives earlier that day. 

So he dragged the trash can out of the kitchen, cleared off most of the coffee table into it, sorted out the weaponry. When he went to return the different guns to Casey’s closet, he spotted the unopened pack of candles Ellie had brought over a few days before, and thought, what the hell? It couldn’t hurt. “You had better appreciate this,” he said to the absent Casey as he set a few out in the living room and scattered them around Casey’s room.

He threw all of the bedclothes into the washer, and cleaned up the spilled drink, tossing the rest in the trash with a token grumble about hangovers and vacuumed the living room quickly. They weren’t slobs, which meant it didn’t take much to clean the kitchen, though he did scrub the counters until they shone, and cleared most of the outdated takeout from the fridge. A quick spritz of air freshener around the place, another gift from Ellie, cleared the rest of the alcohol smell out nicely.

By that point, the sheets had finished washing, so he tossed them in the dryer and went to take a shower. He grabbed his discarded messenger bag from the night before and ran upstairs in a towel. He had awhile until Casey and Ilsa would likely return, but he had already seen Ilsa in a towel and he didn’t want to return the favor, in the event that the others did come back early. Ilsa did much better than him in the “wearing only a towel” department, he thought.

While he dressed, he sorted out his messenger bag, including the files he’d brought home to work the night before, mostly on Federov and his boys. Those would need to be shredded now that they had more than enough to arrest Federov. Awesome’s engagement ring, he set off to the side until he could figure out a good hiding place. He didn’t figure Ellie would root through his room any time soon, but he didn’t want to take chances. There were a couple of files on Kaninchen and Krolik enterprises that he could still check over, so he put those back in the bag to take with him. Something had to break in the Ezersky case soon; apart from stumbling over Jill’s scientist-oriented cell and the dead ends that had led to, they had no other leads on what Fulcrum’s endgame might be.

When he pulled his shirt over his head, his gaze fell on the secondary computer monitor, which showed the idle screen from the Kingdom of Athinei. Sitting in the middle of the screen, chewing her own toenails, was his vampire gnomeling, Schnookie.

“Well,” he said, “at least she’s not eating her earwax this time.”

Since Schnookie had been feeling neglected lately, and he had time, he sat down to level up a couple of times as an apology. It really had been awhile since he had given her any attention, he saw: he had more than a week’s backlog of messages from online friends. The raid requests puzzled him, as he’d deliberately muddied Schnookie’s statistics when he’d built her, solely to mess with Sarah (even if Sarah wasn’t nerdy enough to understand the insult).

The minute he came away from being idle, a new message popped up: wanna raid?

Why not? He had a little while before Casey and Ilsa got back. Barefoot, hair drying from his shower, he settled in to adventure through Athinei. When the dryer buzzed, he took a short break to put sheets on the bed, but they were still raiding when he returned. A couple more minutes shouldn’t hurt. A couple of minutes turned into five, which turned into ten, which turned into a blissful blank state in which time had no meaning at all.

Until, that was, Chuck heard what might have been a throat clearing.

Busted.

He typed in a quick apology to his party and turned, half expecting to see Casey standing over him with his arms crossed over his chest and an annoyed look in place. 

It wasn’t Casey. It was Sarah. And instead of looking annoyed, she was positively beaming. In fact, her smile generated more wattage than the Hoover dam. Chuck nearly had to blink at the brilliance before he saw all of Sarah. Or more specifically, what she was holding.

Sarah’s smile only broadened when Chuck took in the engagement ring box in her hand. 

Chuck’s mind went absolutely blank, except for the words: Oh, crap.

Sarah looked down at the engagement ring in her hand, and the sheer glee all but bubbled. Her eyes shone, but all she said was, “Really, Chuck?” 


	48. The Final Domino

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Discontent is the first necessity of progress. — _Thomas Alva Edison_

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**20:03 PST**

Chuck stared. With his mind absolutely blank, it was easy for the repeated mantra of “Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap” to echo through the recesses where his brain had once been. Should he tell her that it was merely Awesome’s ring, and that he was holding onto it? She looked so immeasurably happy, glowing like a supernova or a beauty queen who’d just won the tiara.

Wait a second.

Wait just a damn second.

Sarah looked _happy_ that he was proposing? Holy hell! He wasn’t ready to get married, and yes, even though he liked—well, it was stronger than that, if he were going to be honest with himself, much stronger—Sarah, he wasn’t nearly to the point where he could possibly be thinking about things like a wedding. And, marriage? Proposing? He’d only been out of the bunker for a little over four months!

Chuck nearly began to hyperventilate, especially when Sarah put her hand over her mouth and continued to stare at the ring she clutched in her fist. “You know,” she said, sounding breathless even through her fingers, “I’ve always dreamed of this moment…”

How in the name of Eternia, Chuck wondered, do I get out of this?

“Ah, yes,” he said, stammering a little. “But you see, that’s not actually—”

“But I never expected anything like this! It’s so gorgeous! I mean, look at this diamond!” Sarah plucked the ring from its case, and he experienced one dizzying moment of terror when he thought she might actually slip the ring onto her finger. “So pretty!”

She was practically crooning at a piece of jewelry. Chuck felt a single bead of sweat slide between his shoulder blades and track its way down his back. 

“This is a total shock,” Sarah said, still going even though Chuck was now officially frozen in horror. “I mean, I had my suspicions, but…”

And there it was. Somehow, his stunned-stupid brain caught the tiniest anomaly in the way Sarah’s eyes flicked down and to the left. Normally, he would have dismissed the gesture, but this time, it hit him: she was messing with him.

She knew exactly whose ring that was. And she was yanking his chain.

He almost burst out laughing, an odd, strangled noise of sheer relief and amusement, though some latent self-preservation instinct screamed that this would be a bad, bad idea. Sarah might not be amused at the fact that he was relieved not to be proposing to her. Through herculean effort, he managed to keep it inside. A devilish voice whispered suggestions in his ear. Normally, he would have ignored it, but…she had started it.

So he forced the shocked look from his face and instead made himself give off an exaggerated, relieved sigh. “Oh, thank God,” he said.

Sarah’s expression faltered for a split-second. This clearly wasn’t part of her script. “Yes?”

“I was so worried, you know. I got that ring awhile ago—” The day had felt like an eternity, after all, what with all of the things he’d put his body through. “And I wasn’t entirely sure how well it would go over, but if you’re—if you’re acting like that, that puts a lot of my fears to rest. I wasn’t going to show you the ring yet, I was planning on doing something special with it, but if you’re amenable…” He deliberately let his voice trail off.

“Amenable?” Sarah asked, and seemed to remember she was supposed to be playing a role. That bright, outshine-the-sun grin came back. “Of course I am! This is the best thing ever!”

“I’m so, so, glad you think so.” Chuck carefully reached out and took the ring and the box from her fingers, nearly giving it away by laughing. Sarah’s fingers had been absolutely lax around the ring. He waggled the box at Sarah. “I’m so glad you found it. I was going to wait, but what the hell? Now’s as good a time as any.”

Sarah’s expression faltered even further. “Wait, what?”

“You don’t like it?” Chuck hid a grin by looking down at the ring. “It’s been in the family for years.”

“I…what? You have a family heirloom? But you never talk about your family! I mean, besides Ellie—”

“A very pretty family heirloom,” Chuck said, interrupting her. He forced himself to look up at her. He was still sitting in the desk chair, with Sarah standing over him. A minute before, she had seemed impossibly huge, looming over him, but he could see the fake-excited smile breaking at the edges as panic began to set in. He should probably stop, but the same devil urged him on. So he brightened. “What kind of wedding, do you think? I was thinking something splashy and huge, an affair to be celebrated for years, with friends coming far and wide from both sides.”

Sarah was positively turning green.

“On an unrelated note, what do you think about Carina wearing organdy?”

“Chuck…”

“What _is_ organdy, anyway? That’s a funny word. Organ-dy. Is it a color? Is it like orange?”

“Chuck,” Sarah said, the panic now a little more evident. “We really need to talk—”

“Just a moment.” Oh, he was going to pay for this, Chuck knew. He threw aside a dozen adages about tweaking the tiger’s tail, and forced himself to bend at the knee, going forward out of the chair. He waited until he was on one knee before he looked up at her fully. “Sarah, would you do me the honor of…”

Sarah looked like she might actually pass out.

“Waiting a second while I put this away?”

He could see her bracing herself, and then the moment of confusion struck. She did an actual double-take. “Wait, what?”

He shrugged. “I’m not going to leave this lying out. That would be irresponsible.”

“ _What_?”

“I mean, Ellie might come up here any time and poke around since I gave her a key and…” Chuck made his eyes widen and gave an overly dramatic gasp, pointing at Sarah. “You thought the ring was for you!”

“I did not! I just—you said it was a family heirloom and—”

“Gotcha.” Chuck pushed the ring under his desk. Sarah’s shock seemed to have rooted her to the spot, thankfully. “Oh, come on, you didn’t think I’d just leave a ring there and forget about it to propose to you, did you? Awesome asked me to hold onto it for him last night. And it _is_ a family heirloom, I just didn’t say it was from _my_ family and—oof!”

Sarah was slim to the point of skinny if she missed too many meals, but getting tackled by her was still like being railroaded by a linebacker with bony knees and elbows. Even so, Chuck was already laughing by the time his back hit the floor. Thankfully, he had just enough warning not to slam the back of his head into the rug under his desk chair. He immediately had to put his arms up to protect his face and chest, as Sarah set in, half-laughing, and half-swearing. “You big jerk! I can’t believe you did that with a straight face!”

“Hey! Pot! Kettle!” He tried to roll over to get away from Sarah’s sometimes-not-so-playful slaps, but she had him pinned with her legs. “You started it! Ow! No biting!”

“I’ll bite you if I want to bite you,” Sarah muttered, and Chuck only laughed harder. Sarah punched him with the side of her fist, once, below the ribcage, and he jolted. The laughter continued. “Lunatic.”

“Yes, but you love that about me,” Chuck said. Satisfied that his girlfriend was no longer attacking him—and knowing he’d gotten off light—he ignored the fact that she was still sitting on him and instead folded his hands behind his head. “Nice try.”

“I had you for a minute.”

“Ha, I’ll never tell.”

Sarah poked his ribcage. He shuddered and snickered.

“Torture me all you like, Agent Walker. My lips are sealed.”

Sarah arched an eyebrow. “Are they now?”

“Well, it’s more of a metaphorical thing,” Chuck said, stammering once more as he realized the intentions behind that eyebrow raise. “You know, a hypothetical, not-real situation, not that I’ve got duct tape over my mouth or anything, which, you know, obvious because I’m talking right now.”

“Well, that’s good. I’ve got big plans for your lips.”

He suddenly wanted to shiver; it wasn’t quite a tingle, not nearly a surge, but he definitely felt excitement, dark and almost treacherous, begin to pump through his bloodstream. Sarah’s look left little to the imagination about what she might be thinking, for once. For having such a constant poker face, she could really make some downright lewd expressions. “Oh, those kinds of plans,” he said without thinking.

She grinned, good-naturedly. “Now he gets it.” p>

“Hmm, I happen to think I’m a very astute individual.” Chuck caught the eye-roll. “Okay, I’m denser than hell, but…” He used the element of surprise and his extensive knowledge of physics to roll them over, pinning Sarah to the floor. She let out a breathless giggle. “I can understand _some_ things.”

“Oh yeah? Prove it.” 

“What if I’m feeling contrary and don’t want to prove it?”

Sarah grinned. “And how would that be different from any other day ending in—”

Chuck sprang. He’d learned bad things about surprising fully trained field operatives, but he figured Sarah would forgive him. Indeed, he felt her tense for just a split-second, but it hardly mattered. She twined her arms around his neck and kissed him back, and after a minute, he felt her smile against his jaw.

He lifted his head. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Just…” Sarah broke off into giggles that felt strange, since he was still pretty much on top of her. “Your face! When you looked up, and I was holding that ring, I thought you’d seen a ghost or something!”

“Hey, focus. I’m working here.” Chuck forced himself to give a gusty sigh. Contact with the floor had rucked up Sarah’s shirt, and he ran his thumbs over her sides in gentle circles. Because of that, he literally felt Sarah go still in that statue-like way she had. “What? What is it?”

A blink and the strangeness was gone. In fact, he was nearly blinded as Sarah smiled at him. “Nothing,” she said, and pulled his head down to hers. He had a brief flashback to the torrid embrace they’d shared in the corridor at Kaninchen Enterprises, but this kiss was nowhere approaching that level yet. In fact, it seemed rather slow and deliberate. They had the place to themselves.

For now, at least.

As if she could read his thoughts—and that was slightly terrifying in its own right—Sarah shifted. “When does Casey get back?”

“He’s taking Ilsa to dinner.” Chuck worked his way down Sarah’s neck, pausing only to grin when he felt her responding tremble. “Should be at least an hour or two.”

“Good. And then maybe we take things over to my place.” Sarah smirked when Chuck lifted his head again, as this time it was to gawp at her. She toyed with a lock of his hair, which was just beginning to curl at the end. “You said you were ready.”

He was, but that didn’t stop the sheer surge of nerves writhing around in his midsection. “I did? I don’t remember that.”

Sarah grabbed either side of his face. “It’s okay. I do.”

“Are—are you sure you’re remembering right?”

“Damn near—”

“Photographic memory,” Chuck finished with her, and they paused to grin at each other. Because of that, neither was too distracted to hear the front door open.

“Oh, damn,” Chuck breathed. “Miscalculated.”

“Walker! Bartowski! You here?”

“Go away,” Sarah and Chuck both called. Sarah added, “Come back in an hour! Maybe two.”

Casey definitely sounded amused. “No can do. Beckman keeps calling, and there’s a meeting in Castle in ten minutes or the team gets reassigned to, and I’m paraphrase, somewhere very, very hot or very, very cold. Get decent and get down here.”

From the look on Sarah’s face, she seemed like she might be tempted to try her luck, but she just sighed and pushed a hand gently against the side of Chuck’s ribcage. He, however, didn’t move. He’d spent five years in Siberia; extreme cold or heat couldn’t get much worse than that. And it was Friday afternoon. His life didn’t revolve around his job anymore.

Sarah, still beneath him, looked a bit strained, though. And when she squirmed, his eyes nearly crossed. “Chuck, if you don’t move, we’re going to owe Casey a hell of a lot more than a box of cigars.”

“We could just be really loud and scare him away.” Feeling brave, he nuzzled against her neck, closing his teeth gently around her earlobe.

He heard the catch in her breath. “As much as that appeals to me on every level…”

“I don’t have all day, CIA! Move your asses!”

“There’s always time for this later,” Sarah said, and locked a leg around his waist. The mixed signals were enough to fry his brain—hopefully not literally, though he might have sensed the faintest smell of burning flesh on the air—and enable Sarah to literally shove both of them over, so that she was once again on top. He groaned when his back hit the floor.

“And just for that, Bartowski, I’m taking a cigar!” Casey called up the stairs.

“That wasn’t—I wasn’t—it—” Chuck broke off helplessly as Sarah shoved a hand over her mouth to muffle the giggles. In the end, he sighed and let Sarah pull him to his feet. “Enjoy your cigar, Casey. We’ll be right down.”

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**CASTLE: MEETING ROOM**   
**20:27 PST**

Very, very hot or very, very cold was looking better and better by the second.

Chuck wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, but somebody must have done something like kick Beckman’s cat or run over Graham’s foot; neither of the bosses looked happy. In fact, if he had to say anything about it, he’d claim they looked downright pissed. He stood in his normal spot, to Casey’s left, and was grateful that he didn’t have to talk at the moment. He was under no illusions that his “idiot talk,” as Casey had once deemed it, would get them all in trouble.

Sarah, on the other side of Casey, seemed to be holding her own. “Yes, ma’am,” she said in answer to Beckman’s latest question. “The others and I agreed that I would speak with the FBI team on site and they would fetch Ms. Trinchina, and that we would convene at a set point. I arrived at the meet-point a moment or two ahead of the FBI. The Russians must have known Ms. Trinchina was being extracted, for they were out in force. I saw a couple of them through the doorway, and nearly didn’t get away in time. They were armed.”

Chuck hadn’t even considered what might have happened to Sarah while he and Casey had been getting Ilsa. Well, he’d worried, and freaked out, but his fears had been nonspecific.

“Unfortunately, I was spotted,” Sarah said. “A few of them chased me, but I was able to get a warning signal off to Agent Bartowski’s phone. Again, unfortunately, not in time. While I was running away, I ran into Ilsa Trinchina, who was also trying to evade the guards. We convened with the FBI team a block from Grand Saville. I convinced the team leader to give Trinchina gear as well, as she was the most familiar with Federov out of all of us. We arrived at the Grand Saville just in time to see Major Casey and Agent Bartowski land in the pool.”

After she’d finished giving the rundown, Beckman and Graham remained silent, each obviously processing the spoken reports. Given that it was almost midnight in D.C., their individual offices were dark. Chuck had no idea what sort of lives their bosses had, but clearly they must be social butterflies if they were in their offices at nearly midnight on a Friday.

Graham took the lead. “So, let me get this straight. You sent the Intersect into the heart of a group of Russians with criminal records as long as my arm, exposed him to a foreign operative operating illegally within U.S. boundaries, were unsuccessful in apprehending said operative, and failed to retrieve the Intersect before he was forced to jump seven stories into a swimming pool? Did I leave anything out?”

Put that way, Chuck thought, it sounded pretty terrible.

“Answer me,” Graham said, and Chuck realized that none of them had responded to the question. 

Sarah apparently decided to take the fall for the team, possibly since Graham was the head of her agency. “Yes, sir. You could look at it that way.”

“How else am I supposed to look at it, Agent Walker?”

Chuck felt himself step forward before he could stop himself. “As a success,” he said.

Beckman’s eyebrow went up. How the woman put so much displeasure into a tiny facial move, Chuck would never know. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said, as a success.” Neither Casey nor Sarah looked at him, but Chuck could practically feel them twitch. He’d regret it shortly, but he was getting fed up at being at the beck and call of the bosses at all hours. Especially those hours he could be with Sarah, picking up where they’d left off on the floor of his room and—that thought was too dangerous to continue in a briefing. So Chuck put his best “agent” expression on. “The FBI arrested nearly twenty of Victor Federov’s men today and may have set the Russian mob back years, thanks to work that Agent Walker, Major Casey, and I did. Yes, I made a Molotov cocktail to try and get us out of danger, but chances are, the bottle wouldn’t have shattered enough even if I had thrown it for it to be dangerous at all. In addition, Casey and I survived the drop into the pool and I for one commend Major Casey for his actions since he saved my life.”

“ _Chuck_ ,” Casey said under his breath.

Chuck ignored him. “So what if the way we went about it was unorthodox? We still produced results. And you know what? You’re welcome.”

By now, Sarah was outright staring at him.

“Agent Bartowski, I don’t believe we asked for your opinion.”

“Why not? I was there at the hotel, too.” Chuck bit his tongue before he could remark that he was more than a meat case for the computer in his brain, and he’d like the higher-ups to remember that, too. “Be honest. How many times do your training scenarios actually go according to plan?”

“You’ll find, _Agent_ Bartowski, that there is a difference between ‘according to plan’ and dropping seven stories into a pool.”

“A drop, I’ll point out again, we survived.”

“Chuck.” This time it was Sarah hissing his name, looking pained.

“I apologize for the insubordination, but this is twice that Team Prometheus has successfully neutralized an enemy threat and has been chastised for it. It’s Friday night. I’ve put in over fifty hours of time as the Intersect this week, and then to have this meeting foisted on me and messing with my daily plans is not helping.” Chuck carefully took a step back, folded his arms behind him in a parade rest position. “So that’s my report of the situation, Director, General. Team Prometheus one, Russian baddies zero, and I’d really like to get back to my night now, thank you.”

By now, General Beckman was gaping at him as well.

Graham, meanwhile, had an expression like a thunderclap. “Understood, Agent Bartowski. Perhaps the Intersect needs a nap.”

Chuck bristled, but Casey’s sub-audible growl was enough to keep the sarcastic reply in check. “No, sir,” was all he said.

“Very well, it’s Friday night, you’ve got a ‘life’ to enjoy. Dismissed, briefing first thing on Monday and we’ll discuss tonight’s…event. Agent Walker, General Beckman wants to have a word with you.”

That was it? Chuck nearly voiced the thought, but Casey clamped a hand over his arm. And then Chuck caught it: the cold-eyed promise of retribution on Graham’s face. Casey all but frog-marched him to the back part of Castle, away from the conference room. The instant they were out of range, he let out an explosion of breath. “What the hell was that, Bartowski?”

“Don’t you ever get tired of it?” Chuck scowled and jerked himself free. “Our mission was a success. We got Ilsa out, we got enough on Victor Federov to throw him into prison for three lifetimes, and it’s all, ‘How could you risk the Intersect!’ And it’s Friday. Did it never occur to them we might have had things to do?”

“You’re just upset you’re not doing a blonde.”

“Damn right I’m upset.” In a rare moment of sheer energy, Chuck began to pace back and forth, quick, choppy strides. “I’m more than just some puppet with a computer for a brain, you know.”

Casey crossed his arms over his chest. “I know that. As a minor side note, where the hell is all of this coming from?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m used to the ‘poor me’ carnival, Bartowski, not…” Casey gestured at Chuck’s pacing. “This. Where is this coming from?”

“I don’t know.” Chuck pushed his hands through his hair. He couldn’t blame the hangover, as he’d stopped feeling that hours before. So close, he wanted to say. They had been so close, things had been perfect, Sarah had felt _so_ good. Of course, that was apparently a cue for the bosses to stick their noses in and judge everything. “Just frustrated, I guess.”

“Frustrated. Uh-huh.” Casey’s tone told Chuck he knew exactly what kind of frustration Chuck was currently experiencing. “You do realize Graham is going to come down on your head like a sack of hammers on Monday.”

“What’s he going to do, fire me?” Chuck snorted. “Oh, wait, nope, I’ve got the Intersect. Bzzt. Next.”

“They could always throw you in a padded cell; let you stare at the walls.”

“Yeah, right. As if Ellie, Gwen, or Sarah would ever let that happen.”

Casey grunted: point. “Just know it’s coming. And thanks to your little show of _cojones_ , we’ve all go the evening off. Thanks. I left Ilsa waiting in the car. You still okay with me having the apartment?”

“Sure. I think…” Chuck straightened his shoulders a little bit. “I think I’m going to stay over at Sarah’s.”

“Good for you.” Casey shook his head once more, and left.

Once he was gone, the hallway seemed a great deal emptier. Chuck was almost tempted to tiptoe towards the conference room and eavesdrop to see what Beckman could possibly want to talk to Sarah about. In the end, he decided against it. Sarah would probably give him the highlights later. If they remembered.

He felt something in his midsection flutter. Nerves, he realized.

Well, it figured. He should be nervous, a little. This sort of thing was important. It had weight. And unfortunately, until Sarah was done with her briefing, it would have to wait. He debated what he should do in the meantime and decided that he could go into his office, surf the web for a bit. If he watched something particularly funny or stupid on Youtube, he could possibly even fight the growing nerves down a little bit. And he’d been neglecting some of his forum boards lately.

He had just sat down at his desk when he saw the manila envelope. It was a testament to the fullness of his day that it took him a full minute to remember Casey had mentioned leaving it on his desk earlier, before the situation with Ilsa had exploded. Finally, Chuck thought, picking it up and feeling the papers inside the envelope sag to gravity against his fingers. Some concrete information on Phillip Dartmoor, Bryce’s mystery. Should he look at it at Castle? The fact that Bryce hadn’t expanded on it in D.C. meant it could be stuff the government didn’t want him to know. Or it could be Bryce playing his typical mind games.

In the end, Chuck sighed to himself and moved the folder to the side. He’d look at Phillip Dartmoor’s files at home, later on, when he could really focus on the information Casey’s contact had gathered. Besides, tonight was reserved for time with Sarah Walker, anyway.

Since it didn’t look like she was done with her briefing yet, Chuck powered his work computer out of sleep mode and began surfing the usual sites, checking up on new video game developments. An article about Bungie was particularly engrossing; he bookmarked it and saved it for a future reread. An email from Dave pulled him into a brief debate about a theoretical use for one of the algorithms they’d designed for the Fulcruminator, and then of course, he had to check his gamer tag and make sure Morgan hadn’t spammed him again for the fun of it. The search for a job, Chuck knew, was not going well.

He accidentally clicked over the Castle security feeds as he navigated through the windows, and tabbed away just as quickly. A full ten seconds later, his fingers stopped typing mid-word. Had he really just seen… Chuck pulled the feed back up, and frowned. Apparently, Sarah’s briefing with Beckman was over.

And just as apparently, it had not gone well.

On the screen, a slightly-grainy version of Sarah drove three uppercuts in a row into Frank’s ribs. The velocity of any single one of those punches looked like it could have dented the finish on a tank. Sarah took no pity on the training dummy, though, and whirled to pummel his face with a roundhouse kick.

She looked furious. More than that, Chuck thought, wincing in sympathy for Frank as Sarah’s left hook found its mark, she looked upset. Beckman must have been feeling particularly brutal tonight.

Chuck hoped it wasn’t something he had said in the briefing. He didn’t want to make Sarah’s job any harder than it already was. His thumb, still on the spacebar, twitched. Should he go talk to her, try and calm her down?

On screen, Sarah let out what looked like a short scream, possibly of rage, and ran at Frank again. That decided Chuck.

He clicked open the private conference room feed and began to work his computer magic. He knew better than to approach Sarah when she was in full ninja mode, but he wanted to get to the bottom of this. If it was something to do with him, he was going to have words with his bosses.

He wasn’t sure what it said about him, or Castle’s security, that it only took him a few minutes to crack the encryption around the conference room video feed, which Beckman had obviously set to private for her briefing with Sarah. With the latter taking up the monitor on his left, still beating Frank to hell and back, Chuck leaned back in his seat to watch and figure out just what his boss had said to his girlfriend.


	49. Applied Force

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever. — Nancy Lopez

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS**   
**21:09 PST**

All in all, it should have been harder to crack Castle’s security. Chuck wasn’t sure who to pin that one on, Laszlo or the people that had taken over after Laszlo had been caught by Team Bartowski and sent to a lovely resort-slash-asylum up in the mountains—where he would have plenty of time outdoors (Sarah’s orders, Chuck had found out later). This sort of sloppiness didn’t strike him as Laszlo’s work, so he put that blame squarely on the government’s shoulders as he thumbed the space bar, hitting play on Beckman’s briefing with Sarah. On the screen to his left, Sarah continued her assault on the doomed Frank, never slowing, the rage never ebbing.

It made Chuck’s heart thump a bit as he used the keyboard to fast-forward until he and Casey had left the room in the debriefing earlier. While Casey was out in the hall, wondering at Chuck’s attitude, Sarah stood with her hands behind her back, at parade rest despite the casual jeans and shirt.

He wondered if Beckman could tell that she was tensed, by the slight shift in her shoulders. He doubted it.

“Agent Walker, thank you for staying after.”

“No problem, General.” Though Sarah’s tone was mild, Chuck recognized an undercurrent of annoyance that he also doubted Beckman heard. “What is it you wanted to speak with me about?”

“I wanted to check on your progress.”

Sarah tensed further, or at least Chuck thought she might have. It was hard to tell on slightly-grainy security footage. As though adding insult to injury, the audio was out of sync on the b-camera, too. He’d have to fix that whenever he remembered it.

On the left screen, Sarah landed a roundhouse that ensured Frank would never have children, even if it were at all possible in the first place. Chuck winced.

On the right screen, Sarah said, “Progress, General?”

“Don’t play coy with me. You were given an assignment when you took the position on Prometheus, and I want your report on it.” Beckman paused, her lips thinning so much that they almost disappeared from her face. “Though I hardly doubt I need the report, with Bartowski’s behavior tonight. Clearly, you’ve been completely unsuccessful.”

“I told you this would take time, ma’am.”

Chuck’s head popped up. Bartowski’s behavior? What the hell did that have to do with Sarah? The last time he’d checked, he was responsible for his own actions. It had been one of the things, Ellie had told him at twelve or thirteen, that marked him as a grown-up. Why he would think of that now, he had no idea.

What the hell was going on?

“I see,” Beckman said, only deepening Chuck’s confusion as he stared at his computer screen. He leaned in closer, as though that would provide him some clarity. It didn’t.

“To be fair, General, the situation is…delicate,” Sarah went on.

“Delicate, Agent Walker?” Beckman startled Chuck by giving an honest-to-God snort. “I know I’ve been out of the spy game for a few years—” That was putting it kindly, Chuck felt. “—But it seems like a bikini and alcohol would solve this problem.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sarah said, and Chuck recognized the tone of her voice. He’d only heard that particular tone once. It had been on the train, he thought. The train on the way to Moscow, when she’d grabbed him by the front of his parka and hauled him upright. Holy hell, he couldn’t help but think. If Beckman were there, Sarah might actually deck her.

He’d put money on Sarah in a heartbeat, but he wasn’t an idiot: Beckman would probably make the fight a tough one. She looked like a scrapper.

“Normally,” Sarah went on, “I’d agree, but Ch—Agent Bartowski is a special case. I can’t simply use the same methods on him that I…”

Chuck didn’t hear the rest of her sentence. He could see her lips moving, categorized that that was her voice in some distant part of his brain, but everything just stopped as the pieces fell together. They were talking about him. They were talking about him, and alcohol, and bikinis, and Sarah’s _assignment_.

You were given an assignment when you took the position on Prometheus, and I want your report on it.

The assignment was _him_.

Chuck’s hands began to shake.

On the screen, Sarah’s audio seemed to cut in and out like a bad receiver, though the computer was probably working fine. “Agent Bartowski is hardly some spoiled playboy with mother issues I have to manipulate in order to get to his rich daddy, if you don’t mind me speaking frankly, General.”

Of course I’m not. And it’s all been…

A lie, Chuck realized.

Every smile, every moment where she touched his arm, or his hair, or left her hand on the back of his neck or his shoulder, was a lie.

He didn’t know what to think. Couldn’t think. Had stopped being able to think ten seconds before, ten minutes before, ten years before. It didn’t make any sense. It made all too much sense. How much of it was a lie? Why had they given Sarah this assignment? Why him? Oh, God, why him?

“When I spoke with Agent Montgomery, he led me to believe you had done exceedingly well in his class. One of his brightest pupils, even.”

“I wouldn’t make the same claim. But, look, General…” Why the hell did Sarah sound sheepish? “I don’t think I’m Agent Bartowski’s type.”

What?

“What?”

Chuck’s head snapped up again, and he realized belatedly he’d dropped it onto his hands when he couldn’t make a heads or tails of anything. And if he was confused before, he thought, it had nothing on now. On screen, Sarah looked actually abashed, or as close to the emotion as he’d ever seen her get. Her jaw was also clenched, a sign that she was pissed off and trying to hide it.

He didn’t know how he felt about that.

“Explain yourself, Agent Walker.”

“I mean that, General. I don’t feel that Agent Bartowski sees me in that way.”

“His psychological reports—”

“Show deference and affection. They do not show sexual feelings, nor is there really any transference that I’ve been able to determine.” Sarah’s voice went sharp now, as Chuck blinked and shook his head, as though to clear water from his ears. This conversation, already shocking, had taken a very surprising turn. “Agent Bartowski has been through a lot during his time with the government. I have been doing my level best to keep him grounded well enough for your Intersect project to function, but Bartowski has made it clear that in no way does he view me as a candidate for a sexual partner.”

He didn’t view Sarah as a candidate for a sexual partner? What the hell? Sure, he’d wanted to move slowly, but that didn’t mean he was dead.

“I suppose that would explain his behavior tonight,” Beckman said, while Chuck stared.

“I will of course speak with Chuck,” Sarah said, shifting her stance from parade rest to her arms folded over her chest. She was telegraphing embarrassment, though he hadn’t the first clue why she would do that. Hell, he didn’t know anything at this point, except that his heart was beating too quickly and he felt both sweaty and too cold and his hands were shaking. “Events like this evening won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Agent Walker,” Beckman said, almost hesitantly. She tapped her pen against the table in front of her in obvious agitation once, twice. Chuck had no more idea of what to make of that gesture than he did the rest of the conversation. He felt like he’d stumbled into one of those absurd game shows where everybody but him knew what was going on, and he would have to improvise along and hope he didn’t somehow end up trying to play a football star at a dog show or something weird like that. “Have you even kissed the man yet?”

It struck Chuck very, very late that this conversation was a bit overly personal. For some reason, it also inspired the need to laugh hysterically, though he held it back.

“No,” Sarah said, and Chuck’s heart stopped. “No, I haven’t, General.”

What the _hell_?

Chuck’s confusion only expanded when Sarah looked down on the screen, once again projecting embarrassment. “Well,” the agent went on as Beckman’s stare bored into her, “okay. Once.”

“And?”

“He rebuffed me.”

“What?” Chuck said aloud. “I did not!”

“Didn’t what?” Sarah asked.

Confused, Chuck looked at the screen, but Sarah hadn’t spoken. What…

Oh, hell. The screen on the left showed an empty dojo.

Slowly, he turned. It really was possible to feel a thousand things and be unable to decipher any of them, he discovered. His stomach was in his throat, and he had no idea if it was the anger or the fear or the confusion or just indigestion.

Sarah stood in the doorway. After the sheer amount of fury and rage in her beat-down of Frank earlier, Chuck would have expected an angry look at the very least. But no, even though she still wore the workout gear—and the sweat—her expression was mildly happy, as though pleased to see him still there.

That expression died very quickly when her eyes tracked over his shoulder, landing on the briefing that was still playing.

Chuck reached behind him and tapped a button. The briefing stopped. “Hi,” he said, without really knowing why.

That shutter fell over Sarah’s features, so familiar and yet so foreign because it had been months since he’d seen her expression close off like that. Without a word, she spun on her heel and stalked out.

Warily, Chuck pushed out of his chair and followed.

Normally, he would have paused before following Sarah into the locker room. She was the one that was less shy about these things. Hell, she’d all but stripped down in front of him on their first day on the job together. But right now, Chuck didn’t care. His head was beginning to split in two from confusion and he just couldn’t figure out why, _why_ the bosses would be so interested in his sex life, or why Sarah hadn’t thought to tell him about any of this, or why she would lie to Beckman. And the locker rooms didn’t have cameras or bugs: a perfect time and place to talk, evidently.

So he padded in after Sarah. “What the hell is going on?”

“I could very well ask you the same question.” She didn’t look at him, didn’t even seem to acknowledge him other than the fact that she was addressing him. Her movements were oddly jerky as she opened up one of the equipment lockers and threw her gloves inside, ignoring her usually fastidious filing system. Instead of looking at him, she stared hard into the locker, as though she could make it spontaneously combust. “What the _hell_ , Chuck? You were spying on me?”

“No,” Chuck said. “Well, yes, but not for—”

“And how long has this been going on?”

“How long have you been lying about me being your assignment?”

Sarah flinched. “Guess there’s no need to ask how much you heard,” she said, her voice surprisingly bitter. She finally looked away from the locker. As much as he’d expected her stare to be piercing, it wasn’t. She just looked tired. “It’s not what you think.”

“Really? Because it sounds like Beckman sent you out here to keep me…” He searched for a word, but all he could come up with was, “Complacent.”

“She did.”

Hearing it straight from her was somehow worse, much, much worse than hearing veiled allusions and then outright accusations over a video conference. For one thing, Beckman was one of _them_. She was a Boss. They were supposed to lie and manipulate; some part of him knew that and even respected it a little. But Sarah was his…Sarah was his girlfriend.

He actually felt like he might retch. Chuck sat down hard on the locker room bench.

“But that’s beside the point,” Sarah said. “You were spying on me!”

“Once,” Chuck said, his voice strained. That same voice continued on without permission from the rest of him: “And I fail to see how that’s worse than lying to me. For months!”

“I never lied to you.” Sarah turned back to her locker, her shoulders so tense that he could count the individual muscles beneath her skin.

“You lied to me about everything! This whole time, this was nothing but—nothing but an _assignment_? Everything you’ve said and—”

“Don’t be so melodramatic. Of course it hasn’t been.” Sarah yanked out a towel and slammed her locker shut. She gave him a wide berth going by on the way to the showers.

How the hell could she possibly be so flippant about any of this? He had video proof, evidence, in fact, still queued up on his computer, to the contrary!

“You’re not the one I’ve been lying to, you should know,” Sarah went on from behind him, and he turned.

“What?”

“Beckman and Graham gave me this assignment because some asshole stuck you in a bunker for years,” Sarah went on, and the language made Chuck blink. Possibly as a concession to his own overwhelming modesty, she stepped behind the shower curtain. A second later, her sports bra was flung over the top of the stall. “And you developed a case of, well, considerably mild—given the circumstances—agoraphobia as a result. Not a big deal except that Bryce screwed you over once again, surprise-surprise, and the psych tests they did on you showed that you of course had a dependence on me. Understandable, given that I was the one to go into that goddamned bunker and finally get you out of that mess, and you saw nobody you could trust but me for over a week, but you know how the bosses are.”

The water turned on.

“You know how they are, Chuck. They’ll use whatever means they can to control every opportunity they possibly can.”

“But what about—”

“And lucky me, I got to be the means,” Sarah went on, bitterness still rampant across her tone. She sounded farther away; she’d stepped under the spray of water, Chuck figured. How she could blithely take a shower in the middle of their—well, it wasn’t really an argument, was it? As much as he wanted it to be one, Sarah kept deflecting, and talking. “Just another way to be used and discarded.”

He nearly yanked aside the curtain to give her a boggled look, but remembered only in time that she had once claimed she didn’t shower in clothing. And his brain was already muddled enough as it was. “Sarah, are you even talking about—”

“So I told Graham and Beckman yes, I’d do it, whatever it takes to be on Prometheus. Does that make me a bad person? Probably.”

“I don’t think—”

“And like clockwork, they ask for a report. Never when I expect it, no, but it’s clockwork in that they’ll always ask when I’m not expecting it, you know? How’s Agent Bartowski? Are you holding his hand enough? How’s the seduction coming along? Is he the docile little agent we need him to be for this ‘experiment’ to work? How about you? Feeling enough like a robot yet?”

For the first time, Chuck got the feeling Sarah had forgotten that he was even there. Oh, and that something might be wrong. “Um, Sarah?”

“And you know what? I’m not a fucking robot.”

“I—”

“And I don’t really appreciate the idea that my own feelings are tools that I have to use against you, of all people.”

“What on earth does that mean?” Chuck said, loudly enough to be heard over the water. “And for the record, are you okay?”

“Never mind.”

Chuck threw his hands up and wondered if being confused was just part of being in a relationship—a relationship, he remembered belatedly, he had no idea was real or not, thanks to the fact that his girlfriend had apparently been put on his government-run team in order to seduce him into following orders.

He wondered if there was a support group for this sort of thing. Probably not, unless you were Macbeth or something.

“You know what? No, I want to talk about this.” The curtain twitched open and Sarah appeared. Thankfully for Chuck’s nerves and sanity, she only poked her head and a shoulder out. Water streamed off of her hair and the one exposed ear, dripping down to the tiles below. “So yeah, now you know the whole story. I’m the honeytrap in your life. Congratulations, honey.”

Even an unwise man could sense there was quite a bit going on under the surface here. Chuck could tell he needed to tread carefully, though he had no idea _why_. “Are you?”

Instantly, Sarah’s face went through about five different emotions, three of which he couldn’t figure out. But shock and anger, he recognized those. “How dare you ask me that?”

“You _just_ said—”

“How on earth could you of all people believe that about me?”

“I don’t know what to believe! All I know is what I saw in the briefing—”

“While spying on me,” Sarah said, scowling.

Chuck looked to the ceiling for guidance. Finding none, he threw his hands up yet again. “I only did it because I was worried.”

“Well, you could have just asked me about it!”

“And suffer the same fate as Frank? I don’t think so.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Sarah gave him a look somewhere between hurt and pissed off before she disappeared behind the curtain again. “I wouldn’t hurt you. Ever.”

“I know that,” Chuck felt the need to say, “but it’s a different reality when you go all ‘I am Woman, Hear Me’—you know what? Not really helping my case. I _was_ worried, you know. You only go into beat-down mode when you’re pissed and upset.”

Which was clearly the case now, but he also knew better than to mention that.

“And if Beckman said something to you about me, then, well, there’s some nasty viruses in my computer vault with her name on them. So I hacked the conference. I wasn’t out to spy on you. I just wanted to know what was wrong.” Because he hadn’t known which way was up since that damn briefing had started playing on his computer, Chuck indulged himself and pounded his forehead into the wall by the bench a couple of times. It didn’t provide clarity; it only gave him a headache. “Just as a matter of curiosity, why the hell didn’t you just _tell_ me any of this was going on?”

There was silence for a long time from the other side of the shower. Chuck held his breath until sparks exploded at the edge of his vision. Just after he exhaled, he heard Sarah say, in an impossibly small voice, “And give you more reason to doubt me?”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Sarah said again, too quickly.

Chuck lifted his head away from the wall, his eyes narrowing. Was that…had he just heard…? He climbed to his feet and approached the shower with all of the caution a man usually afford to nearing a lion’s den. “Ah, Sarah?”

There wasn’t an answer. No noise, but the shower running.

“Is everything okay?”

“Look, I—just go away. I’m sorry and I’ll apologize later, but go away now?” Real desperation laced her voice. “Please?”

“I, ah—”

Now thoroughly perplexed, Chuck shrugged to himself and turned to do so, thinking it might be good just to get away so that he could _think_ again, but a noise broke through: a sniffle. He swiveled in place, uncertain that he had just heard correctly, but another, damning sniffle broke through, just like the first.

Chuck froze.

It was just like the Grand Canyon all over again. Oh, sure, the tears had been mostly silent then, but he recognized this sheer terror, the raw metallic taste of it, all too well. In that moment, he had no idea what to do. Sarah had made the decision for him at the Grand Canyon, all but burrowing into his side while she cried.

Now, she’d asked him to leave her alone. In addition to that, she was naked.

There wasn’t a lot he could do, but he couldn’t leave.

Maybe he should go fetch a glass of water or something. No, that was stupid; she was already in the shower where there was plenty of water. And nothing else he could think of would help, either. In the end, he sighed, grabbed a towel, and threw himself to the wolves. Holding the towel in front of him, almost like a shield, he edged past the outer curtain to the shower stall, squeezed his eyes shut, and said, “Um, I got you a towel, even though you’ve already got one somewhere, I think. But yeah, I couldn’t just leave and—oh.”

He cracked open one eye when he felt something wrap around his torso, halfway to convince himself that Sarah hadn’t somehow turned into a sea monster and attacked him with tentacles, as that was what it kind of felt like.

But no, she was still human and even better, she hadn’t attacked. She had, however, ignored the towel, so that it was trapped between their bodies, sort of flapping limply between them so that one edge nearly dragged on the ground. Chuck got quite the eyeful before he cursed whichever deity that loved and hated him at the moment and looked at the ceiling. At least Sarah wasn’t sobbing. Or at least he didn’t think she was. He couldn’t see her face, as it was currently soaking the shoulder of his T-shirt.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and valiantly tried to pull the towel up and around her. With everything going on, it seemed cruel to test his self-control, too.

“M’fine,” Sarah said, her voice muffled by his shirt.

Even though his clothes were now hopelessly soaked by the mostly-naked woman clinging to him (patience of Job, Chuck thought, patience of Job), he carefully reached around and shut off the shower, wincing when the spray pounded his forearm. She’d apparently been trying to scald her skin off. He almost made a lame joke about tears of pain, but again stopped himself.

It was probably wiser not to say anything. So he stood there with his arms around Sarah, feeling like some kind of moron, in the little space between the two curtains in Castle’s shower stall. Sarah stayed quiet and refused to look up at him, probably a sign that she was still crying, and that moment was the first time he had had to process anything that happened, and he didn’t know what to think. The cynical side of him pointed out how easily he could be manipulated by anybody, by the bosses, by Sarah, even by Casey. The rest of him wanted to shout no, not Sarah. Sarah had told him a thousand times to trust her. Sarah had been the calm and patient one from the beginning, guiding him out of the bunker, beside him in LA the entire time, past the Heartbrake Hotel and all of the heartbreak that had gone with it, throughout DC, and even now. And he didn’t want to believe any of it was a lie, put in place by Graham and Beckman. He didn’t know what to think.

In the end, he didn’t think. He just let Sarah hold onto him and held on back, long after the shower steam had evaporated, just like the tears.

**1 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**‘SKI/WALKER RANCH**   
**22:47 PST**

“You’re not going to fall asleep on me, are you?”

Sarah yawned, mightily. “No, no,” she said, looking ashamed even as she yawned again. “If I fall asleep before eating, I’ll just wake up in a couple of hours.”

“Grouchy _and_ hungry,” Chuck said, and dodged the half-hearted swat. “Well, it’s a good thing because it’s not every day I drag myself to cook for somebody, you know. You are in a very special subset of the human race.”

Sarah wrinkled her nose. “You’re making Spaghetti-Os.”

“With a pan.” Chuck held it up off of the range for a second to prove his point. He’d changed into a spare set of clothing at Castle, and Sarah had—both thankfully and sadly—traded the towel for a sleep shirt and boy shorts. “That implies actual cooking.”

“As opposed to microwaving.”

“Which would be nuking or ‘warming something up’ if you want to use Ellie’s terms. Using a pan—that you then have to wash, which I will also do—means cooking.”

Sarah hugged one leg to her chest, resting her cheek on her knee. She was sitting at the kitchen island, watching him prepare a late dinner for both of them. Between waking up with a hangover, finding out about Ilsa, being captured by Victor Federov’s men, taking his little swan dive, the incident with Awesome’s ring, the debriefings, and the not-argument afterward, it had been a long and exhausting day. Now his brain felt as abused and wiped out as the rest of him, which had slammed into pool water after a seven-story drop. And even worse, his stomach was practically wringing itself out like an old gym towel from hunger.

Neither of them talked about the locker room. Chuck had seen Sarah start to bring it up several times, and he’d nearly done the same, but they’d both backed off the topic. It sat between them like a Pandora’s Box.

In one short conversation, Chuck’s entire perception of the bosses, of the point of Prometheus and all of the work he had been doing as the Intersect, had been altered in some way. How, he couldn’t be sure. But he’d never felt so _used_ in his life. And below that was a simmering anger he didn’t really recognize, except that maybe it had been there all along, just hiding somewhere.

What it all meant, he still wasn’t sure.

He had a feeling that once he’d acknowledged that anger, it wasn’t going to go back into hiding ever again. He didn’t know how he felt about that. So he continued to stir the Spaghetti-Os and tried not to think about it.

“So how many people _have_ you cooked for?”

“That survived?” Chuck asked, and Sarah laughed. “There’s a reason for the law that states I’m allowed only to cook things that come in cans. Sometimes boxes, but the law’s pretty clear it should be cans.”

“I see.” Sarah shifted so that it was her chin on her knee instead of her cheek. She looked away, and he got the feeling she was seeing something not in the actual kitchen with them. Indeed, she proved it by saying, “Do you remember that first night? In Siberia?”

Chuck swiveled slowly. Sarah never mentioned the bunker unless it was to disparage the amount of time he’d spent inside it, or a project he’d helped her and Bryce on while stationed there. They didn’t talk much about the forty-eight hours she and Bryce had spent inside the actual bunker. But he thought about it occasionally, so he said, “Sure, why?”

“Do you remember the Tang?”

Chuck’s face immediately twisted into a grimace. “Oh, geez. Don’t remind me. Bryce drags you hundreds of miles to visit me and I force that stuff on you. I’m amazed you didn’t run screaming.”

“Where was I going to run to?” A humorless smile ghosted across Sarah’s face. “You fed me back then, too.”

“Beg pardon?”

“The MREs. You don’t remember?”

“Oh, I guess.” Chuck frowned as he stirred the mess of red sauce and processed noodles in the saucepan. “I don’t know if it’s the same thing. Spaghetti-Os are far better.”

“You offered those, too.”

“And you didn’t take me up on it? Shame.”

“Actually, I remember thinking you were going to offer to go out and kill, like, a bear or something, the way you were going on.”

Chuck flinched, even while the thought of him actually facing down a bear made him laugh. He must have seemed like such an idiot. “That would’ve been a long trek to find one for you. And thank you, I think, for the idea that I can fight off a bear.”

“I find I don’t really like the taste of bear all that much.”

“My teddy is relieved.”

“I didn’t want to lie to you.”

“About my ted…oh.” Chuck looked up as he put together that they were now talking about the locker room, and the briefings, and the lying. Since Sarah wouldn’t look at him, he made it easier by not looking at her as he collected two of the nicer bowls from the china cabinet. Spaghetti-Os deserved the proper accoutrements. “Why did you?”

“You weren’t ready to hear it.”

“Oh.” Just like earlier, her blunt words hit like a fist. Chuck waited, though. Based on previous experience, now was the time where she rushed to reassure him that everything was okay, that it was all going to be all right somehow.

She remained silent.

The silence felt stifling and awful, like he was being suffocated.

“I see,” he said at length, though he did and he didn’t. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

“I don’t know. I want to think so.”

Chuck picked up the bowls and carried them around the island to the table, just to buy himself time. He nudged them around the table, matching them up perfectly in front of their different places. Fastidious, he knew, but it helped keep his mind busy. “But?” he asked.

Sarah stayed quiet. The silence seemed charged somehow.

“But I don’t know if I would have,” she finally said, and Chuck’s stomach sank. “I’ve been a spy for so long. Some things you just…don’t tell. You keep them close to the vest, so to speak.”

“But this was directly to do with me.”

“And you’ve got enough going on. So I ran interference.”

“I see that’s working out well for you,” Chuck said before he could stop himself.

“Yeah,” was all Sarah said. She climbed to her feet, moving a bit like a creaky old woman, and sat at the table across from him.

“I didn’t mean…” Chuck pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. The headache that had developed in the locker room was back, apparently. “Okay, maybe I meant that. I wish you’d told me, for no other reason than the bosses were hounding you on my account, and I don’t like that.”

Sarah pushed Spaghetti-Os around with her spoon. “I didn’t want you to doubt me more than you already do.”

“I wouldn’t have.”

Sarah just gave him a look.

“Okay. Good point.” Because his stomach was protesting against the lack of food for the past several hours, Chuck dug into his own bowl. The pasta tasted like medicine rather than the comfort food it was meant to be. “Did I really doubt you that much?”

“Chuck…” Sarah sighed. “It’s not a big deal, it isn’t. And we don’t need to talk about that.”

Maybe they did, but Sarah had that look on her face, the stubborn one that he recognized all too well. Fine, he thought. They’d have to come back to that. There was too much other stuff to cover, such as: “Why not make it easier on yourself? Why not just tell them the truth about us? We’re together, blah, blah, blah, you’re in control of your…whatever I am.”

“I think the term would be asset in this case, and you’re _not_ my asset. Just like I’m not your handler. And it’s none of their damned business, is it?”

The vehemence made Chuck blink. In one instant, Sarah went from hesitant to hellfire. “I didn’t tell them the _truth_ ,” she went on, stabbing her spoon into the bowl with enough force to make Chuck worry about the good china, “because they can go screw themselves. Whatever’s going on with us has nothing to do with them.”

“But you _are_ kind of my handler,” Chuck said, and immediately wanted to kick himself when Sarah’s face seemed to crumple. “No, no, not like that. Not that way. But…look, I can’t deny it. You _have_ been there every step of the way, keeping me from going insane and, I guess functional is how you’d say it.”

“Well, I didn’t do it for them, that’s for damn sure.”

“I know, and I get that. But does it matter who you’re doing it for? I—”

“Of course it matters.”

“Let me finish,” Chuck said, holding up a hand for peace. “You’ve been keeping me level, and I truly appreciate that, I do. Every day, even. But doing this tap-dance with the bosses is affecting—you were crying in the shower, Sarah.”

“So?”

“So, that’s not exactly a sign that things are going well. I’m just saying, I wish you’d told me about it.”

“What would you have been able to do? You’re just as much a tool to be manipulated in this situation as I am.”

“But I’m your tool,” Chuck said, and Sarah gaped at him. He waved his hands to stop her from rebutting. “Not quite what I meant, sorry. What I meant is that we’re supposed to be partners. Even if I can’t stand up to the bosses for you, we’re supposed to be in this together, right? Isn’t that what we decided, back in DC? I can be moral support. Think of it as returning the favor for the millions of times you’ve been there for me…and I’m probably just making it worse right now, aren’t I? Please, don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying,” Sarah said, wiping furiously at the corner of her eye with her napkin. “I’m not.”

“Okay. You’re not crying. But do you see what I’m saying? Maybe you were right not to tell me at first, but that time’s past.” Chuck stabbed at an errant Spaghetti-O that had been chased around his bowl. “I don’t want anybody taking on anything like this for me anymore. I want to carry my half of whatever this is with us. I can handle it.”

“I’m sorry. I really am sorry about all of this,” Sarah said, and that awkward silence fell again, broken only by the sniffles Sarah tried to muffle.

“Should’ve chopped up some onions or something,” Chuck remarked after a long time had passed, looking into his half-empty bowl. “Would’ve been a good excuse.”

“Would’ve been, if I were crying.”

“I don’t think onions and Spaghetti-Os really mix.”

“I’m just glad you didn’t put those little hot dog thingies in here,” Sarah said.

“And ruin the perfect ratio of sauce to noodle? Sacrilege.”

Sarah nodded and took a bite. Chuck almost missed the instinctual gag. “Like it?” he asked innocently.

Sarah swallowed quickly. “Um, it’s good. Very, very…good.”

“There’s seconds in the pot if you want them.”

This time, Chuck had no trouble missing the gag. “I’ll make you a sandwich instead,” he said, and took her bowl away. “I think you have to have the palate of a six-year-old to really enjoy this Campbell’s masterpiece.”

“Sorry,” Sarah said, looking faintly embarrassed.

“No worries. More for me.”

Sarah rubbed her hand down her face. “That was what I was afraid of.”

Later, when there was nothing left but a few scrapings of pasta sauce and a crust, they sat on the couch, their feet on the coffee table. An old episode of some reality renovation showwas playing on TV, but neither was really paying attention; Chuck had turned on the TV more for an excuse than an actual activity. He was drained, drained in a way that had nothing to do with the physical—though he was plenty tired, as well, from recovering from a hangover earlier and going through all they had with the Russians. And Sarah seemed even worse, from the way she’d curled up against his side. He’d caught her yawning a few times more, but she’d insisted that she didn’t need to sleep yet.

“That is really, really ugly wallpaper,” she finally said. “Also the curtains are organdy.”

“Say what?”

“You were wondering what it was earlier.” Sarah nudged him and nearly bumped his cheek with the top of her head as she shifted to get more comfortable. “When you asked if Carina would look good in organdy.”

“You want to dress Carina in a curtain?”

This time Sarah did hit his cheek. She also nearly fell off the couch from giggling, and possibly would have if Chuck hadn’t wrapped his arm around her middle to keep her in place. “Seriously, don’t ever let her hear you say that.”

“What, like the next time she randomly drops by, I’m going to ask her, ‘Hey, Carina, ever consider wearing curtains?’ Pass.”

“Yeah, probably not a good idea, all in all,” Sarah said, and fell asleep. It wasn’t quite the equivalent of hitting a switch like C-3PO’s, but she still sagged against him, her breathing evening out and slowing. Chuck froze at first, and then remained still out of fear of waking her. He stayed where he was long after his arm fell asleep, and the TV changed to infomercials.

Everything he knew had changed, and he was watching Bowflex commercials.

Chuck shifted just a fraction, hoping to alleviate some of the weight against his shoulder and get use of his arm back. It proved hopeless; Sarah snuggled closer, as he figured she would.

Maybe that wasn’t accurate, he thought now. Not everything had changed. The bosses hadn’t changed. If anything, they had clearly been this way from the beginning, and he had been unable to see it. Now, though, thanks to Sarah’s little breakdown and the briefing, he could see the puppet strings in every part of his life. He had always been the worst candidate for the Intersect, the broken toy the bosses were forced to keep around only because of one redeeming quality. In the beginning, he hadn’t believed the government would ever bow to his demands, even if Gwen Davenport had been on his side. Getting the operation set up in Burbank, where he could see Ellie again and be surrounded by his own life, had seemed like a victory too good to be true. Seeing Sarah again in that hospital waiting room had been a dream.

Sarah had been sent because she could manipulate—control—him. The Burbank location had been allowed because it was designed to keep him balanced and healthy enough to work the Intersect. Gwen Davenport was only allowed to stay because she bestowed a sense of confidence, but not overconfidence on him.

Well, he’d been railing against Graham and Beckman’s inability to see beyond the Intersect to the man that housed it not hours before. Maybe the only thing that had really changed was how true that really was.

When the front door opened, he glanced over and saw Ellie’s eyebrows shoot up as she took in the scene. “Sorry!” she whispered, closing the door gently behind her. “I didn’t think—I thought you’d be asleep.”

Chuck yawned. “What time is it?”

“Late.”

Sarah shifted against him, but didn’t wake. Both Bartowskis stopped moving until she’d settled. Finally, Chuck asked, “Where’s Awesome?”

“He ended up crashing in the surgeon’s lounge, but I had enough left in the tank to get home. You shouldn’t stay up too much longer.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chuck said, just like he always had when they were kids and Ellie had admonished him for staying up too late. But this time, he smiled a little until something occurred to him, and the smile faded.

“What is it?” Ellie asked, still whispering. “Is something wrong?”

“I—do you have a minute?”

“Yeah, sure. Though we should probably talk outside or something.”

It was an interesting study in danger avoidance to extricate himself from Sarah’s grip and slip away, but Chuck managed, and followed his sister outside. Even though it was February, and chillier than it should have been, he didn’t bother with a coat. Instead, he went straight to the surveillance camera in the corner of the courtyard, pulled something from his pocket, and fixed it to the side of the camera.

“What are you doing?”

“Jamming the signal. The bosses will just think it’s a temporary glitch.”

Ellie’s brows drew together as she sat on the edge of the fountain. “Why on earth do you need to jam—Chuck, what’s going on? Is something happening?”

Chuck took a deep breath, and told her.

**2 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**02:13 PST**   
**‘SKI/WALKER RANCH**

“Those bastards!”

To his credit, Chuck didn’t blink when Ellie surged to her feet and began to pace. He’d pretty much come to expect that sort of stillness-to-movement reaction from most of the people in his life, actually. But he did glance at the camera with his improvised jammer still stuck to the side. “Ellie, shh, c’mon, keep it down.”

She glared. “I thought you said the camera was jammed.”

“It is, but I don’t want to risk it.”

Ellie threw herself down on the edge of the fountain again and continued to glare, though not at him. “Those utter—”

“I know.”

“How the hell could they do this to you?”

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think it’s personal.”

“I don’t care if it’s personal or not. It’s wrong!”

“Yes, it is, but we can’t let them know we know.”

“Why the hell not? They’re the government. We pay taxes, there should be some kind of law or committee or something—”

“Shh!” Chuck said again. He grabbed her wrist. “Ellie, you have to listen to me. This needs to stay between all of us in Prometheus, and it can’t go beyond that.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because Sarah could get in trouble and I don’t know if we can trust anybody else. She’s already having to walk a freaking tightrope as it is.” Chuck let go of Ellie’s wrist to push his hands through his hair. Ellie’s outrage on his behalf had only served to emphasize that he needed someplace to channel his own frustration, though that wasn’t going to happen for awhile. It had been a couple of days since he’d had a good, long bout of Tai Chi: proper Tai Chi. Between Casey interrupting his work-out and his hangover, he was nearly starting to shake from the lack of routine. He pushed all of that aside to focus on the matter at hand. “And it’s already hard enough on her. We don’t need to rush into things and make it worse.”

“Chuck, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“No,” Chuck said, laughing a bit, though the chuckle was flat and hollow. “I’m not sure of anything.”

“I mean, nothing against Sarah, I really like her, but haven’t you considered—”

“No,” Chuck said more sharply. “I haven’t considered, and I won’t.”

“At all? I mean, you wouldn’t be the first guy to—”

“Sarah’s not like that,” Chuck said. “I trust her. I’ve trusted her for a long time, and that’s not going to change. She’s a victim here, too.”

“But she didn’t tell you about any of this until you caught her out.”

“And she had her reasons.” Chuck rubbed his scalp again, but it didn’t relieve any of the pressure building up in his skull and his chest. “Maybe they’re a little misguided, and I wish she’d come clean on her own, but I get why she didn’t. It’s not an easy situation for anybody.”

After all, he couldn’t help but think, the one that lost the most in the game of tug-o-war was the rope.

“And what if she is using you?”

“Then I’m a fool who gets what he deserves. But she’s not, and I’m not.”

“Well, excuse me for being a little more cautious when it comes to being involved in government conspiracies,” Ellie muttered, rolling her eyes.

Despite himself, Chuck had to smile. “I love you,” he said. “You’ve always looked out for me.”

“Well, you’re my little brother. I’m supposed to look out for you. It’s in the manual.” But Ellie still looked troubled. “Chuck, are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll trust your judgment. But if she hurts you, I reserve the right to kick her ass the way I should’ve kicked Jill’s.”

“You do realize she’s a seventh degree black belt in, like, eight different types of martial arts.”

“So?”

“Good point. You’ll pass on all of this, quietly, to Awesome?”

“Of course. Are you going to tell John Casey?”

Chuck paused and pulled on his thumb. “I don’t know,” he said at length. He glanced at the security camera and hoped his jammer was still working. “Do you think I should?”

“I think this either needed to stay between you and Sarah, or it should be something the entire team knows about. Unless you think John might be here to manipulate you and serve as a mole, as Sarah was clearly supposed to do.”

The thought had crossed his mind a time or two, which felt unfair. Though Casey’s respect was begrudging and his overtures of friendship came more in the form of insults, Chuck couldn’t help but think that maybe Casey was on his side. After all, Casey had gotten him the Dartmoor information, had stuck up for him, had taught him to shoot a gun despite all signs pointing to the fact that Chuck Bartowski should never handle a live weapon ever.

As much as Casey was a Company man, through and through, Ellie was right: this was a problem for Prometheus as a team. “You’re right,” Chuck said. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

“I’d leave the shower details out of it when you do,” Ellie said, and she looked mildly squeamish. She laid a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry this is happening to you. If I could, I’d fly to D.C. right now and kick all of their asses.”

“I know you would. We’ll figure something out. Thanks, sis.”

“Good night.”

Chuck waited until Ellie had gone inside before he got up and carefully removed the jammer from the side of the camera. He was halfway to the door when the idea occurred to him.

“Oh, God,” he said, and ran his hands down his face. “Casey is going to have a _field day_ with this.”

Since there really wasn’t much he could do about it at this venture, or until he talked to Sarah, he just shook his head, went inside, and gently shook Sarah awake so that they could stumble tiredly to her bedroom together. There, for the second night in a row, he fell asleep with Sarah using his shoulder as a pillow.

And for the second morning in a row, he woke up to an otherwise empty bed.

Save, of course, for the note on the pillow.


	50. Solo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you. — _Oscar Wilde_

**4 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS**   
**09:07 PST**

It took considerable skill to lean his desk chair back to the point of—but not quite—tipping over, or worse, crashing to the ground in a jumble of lumbar support and nerd. Thankfully, Chuck had pretty much minored in this in college. He knew the exact angle to which any of the old chairs in Green Library could be tilted without disaster befalling him. He knew how to tip a lawn chair, the old recliner at his frat house, and even those lounge chairs campers preferred since they folded easily into a cloth bag and could be slung over one’s shoulder. In the four months Prometheus had been around, he’d also done extensive experiments on his own body mass versus gravity in the chairs they kept at Castle.

He tweaked the angle, sliding his socked foot against the leg of his desk to adjust for the bag of magnetic darts currently balanced on his chest. Without looking—another skill mastered in college—he plucked one out and flung it at the dart board along the opposite wall. 

It made a bit of a _clang_ as it hit. Metal walls, metal darts. It figured.

“You know, Bartowski,” Casey said as he entered, rubbing his hair dry from his post-workout shower, “you’re a real paradox.”

Chuck tilted an eyebrow. “Big word for you, Casey.” 

“You stick a pretty blonde in front of most men, they don’t do a lick of work. Take the pretty blonde away from you? I haven’t seen this little work out of anybody since the Air Force dropped by my base back in ‘04 to run some tests.”

“I’m doing very important stuff,” Chuck said, and threw another dart. “And I’m glad you think Sarah’s pretty. I’ll be sure to tell her so when she gets back.”

Casey grunted. “You get the data dumps scanned?”

Chuck pointed at a stack of files on the side of the desk. “Los Angeles’s finest are already tracking down its requisite amount of scumbags, courtesy of yours truly.”

“Well, at least there’s that.” Casey’s mien shifted abruptly from exasperated to annoyed. It was a minute shift with most anybody else, but Casey’s anger had many flavors. Chuck, about to reach for another dart, paused. Unlike with Sarah, though, he didn’t have to wait long for the issue to come spilling out. “And did you really have to reprogram Castle again?”

“What’s the matter, Casey? Not a fan of Paul Simon?”

“I will be in no way, shape, or form referring to you as ‘Al’ and neither am I technically your bodyguard.” Casey glowered. “I am an agent of the National Security Agency, and I expect to be treated as such. Got me?”

“Change the song, got it.” 

“Nix the song entirely.”

“Can do.”

Casey paused and helped himself to the bag of pretzels on Chuck’s desk. “What’d you pick for Walker?”

“Does it matter?” Chuck tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. “She’s not here.”

“The hangdog expression is a real lady-killer, Bartowski. Keep it around for when Walker gets back, will you?”

“Why do you care?” Chuck picked up another dart, but didn’t throw it.

“Because my expansion pack’s late, and I have no other entertainment to keep me occupied.” 

“You could go beat on Frank some more. I’m sure he’s lonely, with Sarah gone.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“‘Maneater,’” Chuck said. “That’s the song I picked for Sarah.” He’d actually selected it before, as he was calling it in his head now, BriefingGate. But it hardly seemed to matter, not when she’d left him alone—in her bed—with only a note for company. 

“Fitting,” Casey said.

“Is it?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’m not the one she ran off on.”

“She didn’t run off.” Chuck tilted the chair to dangerous angles and stared at the ceiling. “She went away for a couple of days to think.”

“Whatever helps you get through the day, Bartowski.” Casey dropped into the spare desk chair—Sarah’s chair—swung his legs up onto the desk, and helped himself to the pretzel bag again. “You talk to her at all?”

“The note said call her. I called.” Chuck remembered he was still holding the dart, and threw it. It hit the edge of the target, wobbled a little, but otherwise stayed fast. “For the record, she’s doing very well, staying at a little B&B, though she won’t tell me where, but she did enjoy a spinach omelet for breakfast and is getting ready for her drive back, and I’m sure she misses you, too, Casey.”

Casey grunted. For a long moment, silence fell between the men, as it had for most of the weekend. In fact, the entire Operation Prometheus just seemed to be quieter. Sarah was out of town, and Ellie and Awesome had been working but had been ultimately supportive in that “If you need us, we’re here and please call” sort of way. Casey had taken the news of Beckman and Graham’s manipulations with a shrug and a “That’s the DNI for you.” But he hadn’t made many belittling comments in the meantime. It was almost like he was waiting.

It was like they were all waiting.

“Make any decisions yet, Bartowski?”

Chuck had spent all weekend thinking about it, ignoring the file that even now sat on his bedside table at home. Now he said the one conclusion he’d managed to come to on his own: “Get the Intersect out of my head.”

“You think you can do that?”

“The government put it in my head. Well, indirectly. Bryce put it in my head. Whatever. Either way, they should have some way to take it out.” Chuck thought about it for a second, and thought about the history of the man sitting next to him. “Without a bullet, that is.”

“You’re the first subject, it could be difficult.”

“Could be.” Chuck tossed a dart in the air, caught it. “Don’t care.”

“What’s your sister think?”

“She’s looking into it.”

“What’re you going to do when it’s gone?”

“Not work for the government anymore, that’s for damned sure.” Chuck tossed the dart again. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Casey brushed pretzel crumbs off of his front and rose to his feet. “Well, it sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this, Bartowski. It’s been good working with you.”

“You’re being uncharacteristically nice to me,” Chuck said.

“What of it?”

“Uncharacteristically. It means out of character.”

“I know what the hell it means.”

“Any particular reason why?”

“None I’m going to share. Have the song gone before I get back.”

“Back from where?”

“I have a date.”

Chuck blinked. “Wait, I thought Ilsa left. I mean, I seem to recall her little walk of shame when—okay, not walk of shame, definitely no shame in that walk, you can stop making that noise, Casey.” When the growling had subsided, Chuck cleared his throat. “What I meant to say was that I am pretty sure I saw her leaving for the airport when I came home the other day.”

“Date’s not with her.”

“Then who—”

“I’m going to Simi Valley. You’re staying here. As in this office right here, within the space you see all around you right at this moment. You may leave to go to another room to collect more food, more Red Bull,” Casey ticked points off of his fingers, “if you need to work out, or relieve yourself. Otherwise? You stay within these four walls. It’s my birthday and I’m not waiting around for Walker to come slinking home because I’ve got a date with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and you are not screwing it up by getting kidnapped, dangled off a building, or nearly blown to pieces, got it?”

He strolled out before Chuck could remember to close his mouth.

A second later, he strolled back in. “Unless, of course, I get to shoot somebody. And for me to miss out on my day at the library, Bartowski, it had better be a lot of damned somebodies in order to make it worth it.”

“Got it,” Chuck said. A second later, he added, “And uh, happy birthday.”

The only reply was the sound of the Scooby door—which needed oiling again—opening and closing behind Casey. Stunned, Chuck slowly turned back to the computer and stared, unseeing, at the monitor. Casey had a birthday. Which meant… “Dude, he didn’t come off of an assembly line. I have to tell Sarah.”

Chuck paused, halfway to his phone. “And now,” he said aloud to nobody, “I am talking to myself.”

It just figured. Chuck opened up a new text message and settled in to share his amusement with Sarah.

**4 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS**   
**10:36 PST**

When an old-fashioned ringtone blared through the office, Chuck looked up in surprise and then down at his cell phone, which had sat silent since his texting bout with Sarah had ended half an hour before. The viewscreen was empty: no incoming calls. As he was the only person there at the moment, that was a bit puzzling.

The ringtone sounded again. Chuck looked around in confusion, and finally spotted the old rotary-style telephone on the wall. He squinted. “When did…”

Oh, right. Castle had a front business, Pacific Securities. The number must not have been routed through his cell phone like he’d thought it would be. Warily, Chuck rose, padding out of his office in his socks, and picked up the phone from the cradle. “Uh, Pacific Securities, Chuck speaking. Can I help you?”

 _Please_ , he thought, _don’t be a test from Casey_. After all, the phone was outside the four walls Casey had indicated.

“Chuck Bartowski?” a female voice asked. Chuck nearly breathed a sigh of relief: not Casey, unless he had paid somebody to play a trick on Chuck.

“This is he, yes.”

“Please hold for Mr. Kohlmeier.”

“Mr—” Chuck said, but classical music poured through the receiver. Chuck was left staring in befuddlement at the wall above the phone cradle. Had he heard that right? Andy Kohlmeier, bigwig at Kanichen Enterprises, and one of the men Chuck and the rest of Prometheus were investigating? Calling _him_?

What the frak was going on?

“Chuck, hey!” Andy Kohlmeier’s voice wasn’t hard to recognize, as Chuck had heard it at the very memorable party less than two weeks before. “How’s it going?”

“Uh, great, Mr. Kohlmeier. And, uh, how are you?”

“Andy, please, please.”

“Right. Andy. I’m doing well. How are you?” Chuck repeated. He wiped a hand across his face and crinkled his brow when it came up wet. He should be better at dealing with strangers by now, possible Fulcrum ties aside. 

“Doing great, doing great. Listen, I know it’s last minute, but I was wondering if you were free for lunch today?”

“What?” Chuck asked before he could stop himself.

“There have been some security issues and I could really use a private contractor,” Andy went on, as though Chuck hadn’t spoken. “And like I said, I know this is very last minute and not usually how we do things at Kanichen, but I checked your company’s website and was very impressed with what I saw, and thought you might like to meet me for lunch. On Kanichen, of course.”

“Oh. Right. Uh, I’m not sure what my schedule—”

“If you can’t make it, it’s totally understandable, and we can reschedule, but there’s…” Andy paused, and Chuck finally heard something in the pause that made him squint and straighten up. “Something’s going on at Kanichen, and I’m not sure who to trust, so I need an outside contractor, if you know what I mean.”

“Wow,” Chuck said, his eyes widening. Because they’d been investigating Kanichen for awhile, he knew there was something hinky with the company, but for Andy to pick up on it? It must be serious. And they might not get an opportunity to, as Casey or Sarah had once put it, turn an asset like this again. Even so, Casey was in Simi Valley and Sarah wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours from her mystery trip, and neither of them would ever want him to go to this kind of meeting alone. “I’m not sure today works, exactly, but is there maybe another day this week?”

“I’m on a plane to Austria the first thing tomorrow morning, and I’d like to get a head-start on sorting this out,” Andy said, sounding regretful. “You would be doing me such a solid, Chuck, you have no idea.”

If he stayed in public, maybe Casey and Sarah wouldn’t mind so much. After all, there wasn’t much Fulcrum or Kanichen could do to him in public, was there?

“Where did you have in mind?” Chuck asked.

****

**4 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**MADAME COTILLARD’S**   
**12:07 PST**

Chuck handed the valet his car keys and received a nod and a “Have a good lunch, sir,” in reply. He hoped the fact that there was a line of sweat creeping down his spine, under his jacket and shirt, wasn’t obvious to anybody but him. As Sarah had pointed out a few days before, he had come so far for a man stuck in a bunker for years, but even now, facing the big, open space outside of Madame Cotillard’s without either of his teammates present had nerves shaking his stomach a bit. He smoothed a hand over the front of his suit coat and pressed onward.

Madam Cotillard’s sat on a corner not too far from Castle, a big, open building with ample patio dining. Chuck had Googled the site at Castle and knew all of the exits and other security issues, and had memorized the map for the couple of blocks surrounding it, but none of changed the fact that he felt naked without backup. Also, he was not nearly prepared enough for five-star dining, especially not today. The tablecloths were real, the napkins were linen, and the cuisine was French—very expensively French, at that. Normally, Chuck imagined the patio wouldn’t always be optimal dining in February, even on an oddly warm day like today. Andy, however, had scored them a table inside.

The other man rose as Chuck approached. “Thank you so much,” he said, shaking Chuck’s hand, “for meeting me on such short notice. You have no idea how much of a lifesaver you are.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Chuck said, though he wasn’t sure that was actually the case. He felt jittery as he unbuttoned his suit coat and took a seat across from Andy, but thanks to months of learning from Sarah’s poker face, he was pretty sure none of that was showing. “Just what exactly is the trouble you seem to be—”

“Shh, not yet,” Andy said, and the waiter came up to take their orders. Chuck nearly broke his poker mask and raised his eyebrows when Andy ordered a scotch. He stuck with water himself. “Sorry, in due time, I promise. After we order.”

“Certainly. Take your time,” Chuck said, and studied the menu. The cheapest thing on the menu cost enough to feed a small third-world nation for a week, he figured, but if Kanichen was paying, then…he ordered a salad and the salmon. Sarah was coming back in town; when she got back, he wanted to at least be partially truthful when he told her he’d eaten healthily.

Andy got the steak. Chuck wondered exactly what was going on at Kanichen.

“Now,” Andy said once the waiter had absconded with the menus and their orders. “Down to business, I suppose.”

“You make it sound like a great mystery,” Chuck said, fiddling with his water glass. He hoped he sounded suitably nonchalant. “We’re not dealing with corporate espionage here, are we? Because I have to say, that’s a little…”

“Cliché?”

“I was going to say ‘out of my ballpark,’” Chuck said, though he figured between all of them, Operation Prometheus probably had the market cornered on all things espionage. “My clientele isn’t usually on the level of Kanichen. What’s the problem, Mr. Kohlmeier?”

“Andy, please. Call me Andy.”

“All right. Andy, then. Pacific Securities would like to do anything it can to help, of course, with whatever—” Chuck spotted something out of the corner of his eye and nearly frowned. It was only a matter of practice that kept him talking with only a minor stumble. “Whatever issues you’re having. And I’m terribly sorry, but would you excuse me? I think I saw—yeah, I’ll be right back.” With that, he set the napkin on the table and hurried off. Should he go straight up to what he’d seen? Or wait? 

In the end, he went to the men’s room, checked under all of the stalls, and washed his hands. It only took thirty seconds for the door to open behind him.

“Hey, Bryce,” Chuck said. “We’re clear. Just so you know.”

His best friend from college didn’t look at all surprised that Chuck had spotted him. “Hey,” he said, moving to the sink next to Chuck’s. “Spotted me quickly. That’s good, Sarah’s really coming along with your training.”

“That was Casey,” Chuck said, a little more annoyed at the idea of being trained by Sarah than he had any right to be, he knew. But everything that had happened with Sarah, and her leaving, still felt far too raw. “What are you doing here, Bryce?” 

“Casey called me. Said you needed backup.”

So that was why Casey hadn’t protested his meeting Andy for lunch. “Nice of everybody to let me know.”

Bryce shrugged a half-hearted apology. “I could have been following Kohlmeier, you know,” he said in that mild way he had. “Have you found out anything?”

“He’s spooked about something,” Chuck said, wiping his hands dry. “Doesn’t really want to talk about it, but he’s edgy.”

“Drinking,” Bryce said.

“Scotch, yeah. I’m thinking it has to do with something in Kanichen’s computer system, though I haven’t been able to detect anything in the drives Sarah and I stole at the party.”

“Or it could be a trap.”

Chuck looked around at the upscale bathroom all around them, with the little stack of folded towels by the sink rather than paper towels. “Odd place to spring a trap.”

“A trap’s a trap, Chuck. Kanichen could be onto us, or worse, onto you, and out to separate you from your team. Not that they’re here at the moment.”

“But you are,” Chuck said, scowling at Bryce’s dismissal of Casey and Sarah. Casey, he could understand, as there was no love lost between the men, but for Bryce to speak about Sarah like so, after everything Sarah had avoided telling him about their relationship, it rankled somewhat. “And isn’t that what Graham and Beckman said, Bryce? You’re on the team, too?”

“Yeah, part of the team. Right. I get invited to all of the softball games and everything,” Bryce said.

Chuck bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep from pointing out the obvious fact that maybe Bryce Larkin’s attitude and need for secrecy had something to do with that. But Bryce sighed, cutting him off at the pass. “Sorry,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m tired. It’s been a long few months.”

“No kidding.”

“Find out as much as you can about Kohlmeier and his problem as quickly as you can and then jump ship. I don’t like being out in the open like this. And try to remember as exactly as you can. Andy might be trying to pass something in code.”

“Or…” Chuck pulled out his wallet and dug through the credit card slots until he pulled out a small filament sheet. “Your watch CIA-issue?”

“Gift from Digital Dave himself.”

“Excellent, that makes this easier. Let me see it.”

With Bryce looking on, Chuck took both his watch and Bryce’s and set them on the edge of the sink. It took a little delicacy since the filament was so thin, but with his optical screwdriver, he aligned identical patches to the wiring on the underside of each watch face. A few seconds configuring each watch interface later and… “Done.”

“What’d you do?”

“My watch has a mic on it, it’ll record everything from mine to yours, giving us two copies to work with.”

“Awesome!” Bryce admired the watch for a second before he slipped it on. “Where was all of this tech wizardry at Stanford?”

“Not existent yet, I guess.” Chuck shrugged and donned his own watch, resettling it against his wrist. It always felt strange without it. “Spend a few years by yourself in a bunker, and you’ll be amazed what you get into just to make the time pass.”

“Oh,” Bryce said. He had a look on his face that Chuck couldn’t decipher, but it was fleeting, there and gone in a blink. “Right, yeah, I can see how that is.”

“Yeah.”

Silence fell. It was even more awkward than Chuck had always feared it would be, in the inevitable situations where he had to deal with Bryce without Sarah or Casey around to keep things professional.

“Look,” Bryce said, suddenly breaking the silence. “I should let you get back to…”

“Spying?” Chuck asked.

“Yes, that. Good work with the watches. If you need my help, I’ll be…”

“Yeah,” Chuck said, and headed for the door. “Thanks, Bryce.”

He paused in the corridor outside the restroom to shake his head; had it been his imagination, or had that been more uncomfortable than usual? Maybe it was because he was now officially breaking the bro code—their frat had always held to an oath not to go after your best friend’s ex; Chuck figured the allure of Sarah Walker was stronger than most any oath known to mankind. But Bryce truly hadn’t seemed overly bothered by it, except for that one moment in D.C.

Maybe Chuck was just imagining things. It happened.

He smoothed the front of his suit coat before he joined Andy at the table. “Apologies for that, I got a call from another client.”

“No international intrigue there, I hope,” Andy said, raising his scotch in a toast.

“Just system glitches that one of my programmers can sort out without me. Trifling, really.” Chuck picked up the napkin he’d left behind, frowning a bit. It was folded and he certainly hadn’t done—oh, the waiter must have brought over a new one. It nearly made Chuck twitch to notice that somebody had paid such close attention to him. There were too many people around, fussing, all the time. It almost made things hard to breathe.

Of course, that could be because he was meeting a man from a company affiliated with Fulcrum in public. Without Casey or Sarah there as backup.

“Hopefully they won’t bother me again. You said international intrigue? You’re making me a little nervous with all of this talk, I have to admit. I’m not sure I’m up to the level of international intrigue.” Or at least, Chuck thought, he wasn’t until he’d had his third cup of coffee.

“I’m not certain it’s that serious,” Andy said. “In fact, I may be, what is it you Americans say, jumping at ghosts?”

“Shadows,” Chuck said. “But if you’re suspicious something might be wrong, well, I highly doubt you got this far without trusting your instincts. Why don’t you tell me what you think the problem is, and I’ll see what I can do about it?”

“Discreetly.”

“Yes, of course. It won’t go beyond the edge of this tablecloth.” Except, of course, for the fact that Chuck’s watch was hopefully broadcasting every word to Bryce. Where Bryce was, Chuck didn’t know. The other man hadn’t returned to his table. But maybe he’d just gone somewhere private to listen into the conversation. Perhaps that spoke of a sense of confidence that Chuck wasn’t going to get himself into trouble, out in the open with Andy Kohlmeier. “Even if you choose not to hire me to handle this.”

Andy finally set his scotch down and gave Chuck a sober look. “Thank you, Chuck.”

“You’re welcome,” Chuck said, trying to ignore the guilt.

“A couple of days ago, I noticed an anomaly in one of the server scripts. I wouldn’t have picked up on it, except my programmer had gone home for the day and one of the in-house systems was…”

“Buggy?”

“Yes, good word to describe it, I think. And I may not be up to date on every fancy new code that comes out, but I thought I could handle a small error in the code.”

“What did you find, instead?”

“I’m not entirely sure.” Andy frowned and reached into his pocket. Casey’s gun club lessons had affected Chuck to the point where he tensed, but the other man only pulled out a mobile phone. “I took a picture, though.”

Chuck frowned at the phone screen. It took him a moment to recognize the programming language, and a minute more to decipher it: whoever had written this particular code hadn’t believed in organization. His old professors would have taken points off for the lack of indentation alone. It made his organized soul weep a little.

“I think I’d have to look at this in context,” he said after a moment. 

“I was afraid you might say that.”

“You mentioned you were leaving the country, so I know that might cause problems.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Do you think it’s a backdoor? Is somebody trying to channel funds out of Kanichen?”

“Hell,” Andy said, and picked up the scotch again as Chuck continued to study the screen, “for all I know, we just have an idiot programmer working in development. You can find out for me?”

“If I can get access to more than this, chances are I can give you an answer,” Chuck said at length. How would Casey and Sarah play this? They’d have some kind of smooth plan to get inside Kanichen and gain full access to everything. He just had his wits and whatever he made up now with Andy. He could only hope he was doing this right, and that Casey wouldn’t strangle him when he returned from Simi Valley. “But it might take time. Finding this sort of issue…it’s not something easily done.”

“But you can do it?”

“I’m brilliant, no worries,” Chuck said. “How likely do you think this is—that somebody might be building a worm or a backdoor into your system?”

Andy shrugged unhappily. The conversation lulled as the waiter brought their meals out to them, offering the pepper grinder and checking twice to make sure the gentlemen didn’t need anything else. Chuck bit his tongue over a bad joke about wanting a good tip, and took his cues from Andy, who mostly seemed to ignore the wait staff as if they weren’t there at all. Unfortunately, this meant that Chuck couldn’t sneak a picture of the phone screen while Andy wasn’t looking, so he handed the phone back. He’d have to recreate as much as he could from memory later.

“Things at Kanichen have been strange,” Andy said when the waiter had finally whisked away through the kitchen door, not far from their table. “I don’t know what it is, but there is something in the air. I am not a superstitious man, Chuck.”

“Neither am I.”

“But I can sense when something is amiss. I have no proof, but I think it is something to do with the program I showed you. Tell me, would you be willing to go undercover?”

“Undercover?”

“I need a spy,” Andy said, and Chuck choked on his drink. “To infiltrate my company, and find out if there is a mole. Would that be a service I can hire you for?”

“I…” Chuck hastily set his water glass on the table. “I don’t know how great I’d be at the spying thing, honestly, Mr. Kohlmeier.”

“Andy.”

“Right, Andy. I’m just, I’m just a nerd, you know? I’m good with computers.”

“You’ve never dreamed of trying to be somebody else?”

Oh, he’d dreamed of it daily, it sometimes felt like. Especially in those first days after Sarah had pulled him out of the bunker, when he’d sweated through every shirt at just the thought of going outside. But Chuck put a puzzled look on his face. “I think I was good at that with just Dungeons and Dragons.”

Andy laughed, but there wasn’t much humor to the noise. “Do you think you could give it a try?”

“I don’t have to wear a cloak, do I?”

“No, no. I would just need you to…” Andy broke off in the middle of his sentence and turned so quickly that Chuck’s hand automatically twitched for the tranq gun hidden beneath his sports coat.

“What? What is it?”

“I don’t know. I thought I saw something, but no matter.” Andy turned back to face him.

Chuck, meanwhile, felt a drop of sweat slide down the back of his neck. Had Andy spotted Bryce? Surely the other man had to be watching them from some vantage point, and if Andy was already paranoid, that could lead to bad things. And they were so close to getting an actual mole inside Kanichen, even if Sarah and Casey probably weren’t going to like leaving him alone at Kanichen all day.

That was going to be such a fun conversation.

Chuck made sure to look around, but he didn’t see Bryce at all. A movement fluttered at the corner of his eye, though. Instinctively, he turned, and his eyes widened.

The door to the kitchen had a long slit of a window running along one side, obscuring most of the patrons’ view of the kitchen. But a waiter had just hurried back into the kitchen, giving Chuck a split-second look at what was clearly a reflection of Bryce Larkin, facing away from Chuck and Andy. Chuck didn’t know why, but he could sense Bryce was close to reaching for his gun.

Had they been found out? Was this really a trap?

Chuck twisted in his seat, searching for Bryce in the restaurant. Finally, he spotted the other man through the long bay of tinted windows, out on the mostly-empty patio seating. As he watched, Bryce faced off against two men in dark suits, obviously tensed for battle. And then Bryce took off running.

Oh, hell.

If Bryce was in trouble, so was Chuck. He shoved up from the table before Andy could say anything and said, “I’m really, really sorry to do this, but I think there’s--yeah, something, excuse me.”

He headed for the exit so quickly he bumped his hip into an empty table. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t—enjoy your lunch, sorry—” When he righted himself, he spotted the men. There were two of them, coming from either exit. The black suits and black ties shouldn’t have separated them from the rest of the customers in Madam Cotillard’s, but for some reason, Chuck’s blood froze. They had a predatory look on their faces, and they were aiming for him, threading their way through the tables.

“Oh, frak,” Chuck said. Had he walked right into Fulcrum’s clutches? Was Andy evil? He turned back to look at the other man, almost expecting him to be rising from the table with a monologue all ready to go. 

But Andy hadn’t moved. He was giving Chuck a funny look, probably wondering why Chuck was hurrying away as fast as his legs could carry him. He hadn’t seemed to have spotted the men.

Neither of the men seemed to be heading for him, either. Chuck, however, was a different story.

“Oh, crap,” he said, and dove for the only escape route he could: the kitchen.

Heat hit him like a fist. Outside the kitchen, Madam Cotillard’s was clean, elegant, with real silver cutlery. The kitchen was another world: motion and progress, full dishes and food everywhere, steam rising like some demented bath-house. Cooks and wait-staff hustled about, never still for more than a fraction of a second. Pots and pans clattered in a weird cacophonous symphony. Chuck flinched.

“Monsieur!” The maître d’ nearly dropped the plate in his hand. “I am sorry, but the kitchens are off limits to—”

“Sorry, sorry,” Chuck said, and shoved past him. If he got kidnapped, Sarah and Casey would never let him hear the end of it. “Just got to—oh, crap, look out!”

The kitchen door crashed open behind him, sending a waitress flying. One of the men came through, reaching into his suit jacket for something.

Chuck didn’t intend to find out what. He took off running, dodging into the heart of the kitchen. Two long stainless steel counters stretched parallel to a grill that took up the entire back wall, chefs and cooks working diligently at various stations. They all stopped to stare until: “Gun!” 

One of the cooks shouted, and the kitchen exploded into frenzy. Chuck had to swerve to the side, bumping his hip against the counter, to avoid trampling the sous chef and the dishwasher. “Gun! He’s got a gun! Look out!”

Of course the bad guy had a gun. Because plans just couldn’t go right when you were Chuck Bartowski. 

A waiter streaked by Chuck, cutting off his path and sending him crashing onto a pile of flour on the counter and some half-finished pasta. He spun, looking for another escape, but there was nothing but the chaos of the fleeing kitchen staff, and the man who’d followed him in. 

“Oh, crap,” Chuck said. There was a long counter between them, a counter covered in half-chopped vegetables, uncooked pasta, and other foodstuffs. To his right was the grill and the stove, with plenty of burning pans and lots of opportunity for pain. That wasn’t even counting all of the knives and other sharp instruments left abandoned by the staff. It was a veritable kitchen of death, and he was trapped right in the heart of it.

And from the triumphant look on his pursuer’s face, the goon knew it, too.

“Gah,” Chuck said, dodging back and keeping as far away from the wall as he could. Casey’s lessons flitted through his mind, too fast and too jumbled to be of much use. Find a weapon, any weapon.

Well, he was in the kitchen of death. There had to be a weapon somewhere. Chuck snatched something at random and flung it, hoping it was sharp. A bowl went flying; the man ducked. “Hey!”

Chuck threw a second bowl and ran to the right, hoping to get out into the main part of the restaurant again. It didn’t work; the man skidded a bit, but dashed after him, the counter still between them. He was going to box Chuck in at either end, Chuck saw, with no way out. The gun wasn’t precisely pointing at Chuck, but the fact that the guy had pulled it out in plain daylight and in front of witnesses definitely told Chuck he meant business.

Chuck grabbed a handful of vegetables and hurled them.

“Stop that!”

“No,” Chuck said, dodging backwards. The small of his back hit the temperature controls on the oven. He yelped. Suddenly, looking across the counter at his pursuer, he had a much stronger appreciation for the term “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“Who are you?” he asked, hoping his voice wasn’t shaking like it sounded like it was in his ears. “What do you want? I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m just enjoying my lunch, man.”

“Shut up,” the man said. He raised the gun, and the end of the barrel looked huge, more like a cannon than a pistol. Chuck’s heart, already galloping, pounded even faster against his sternum. “Put your hands on your head and come with me.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Chuck cast about, desperately, for an escape, any escape, any way out, but there was nothing but the thug and the counter between him and both exits. _Stall_ , his brain told him. He needed to stall until Bryce could get free of whatever imbroglio he’d stumbled into, and could come save Chuck. “Look, look, do you know how expensive this place is?”

That was clearly the last thing the dude expected him to ask. “What?”

“I mean, we are talking five stars here, man. Do you know how much the T-bone costs in this joint?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It is expensive.” Chuck edged to the left. His pursuer mirrored him. Chuck stopped. A horrible, horrible idea was beginning to form. “Ex _pen_ sive, let me tell you. It’s like eighty bucks for a steak. For a _steak_. I could go to one of the flyovers and buy a cow for that much.”

“So?”

Chuck eyed the counter. He was tall, but it might work. And thankfully, he’d been in enough pants-dampening-scary situations to be able to keep a conversational pattern, albeit a terrified one, going. “So, you should let me go out and finish the steak. It’s only fair. I mean, it’s eighty bucks, after all. Do you regularly eat eighty-dollar meals? Because I sure don’t. Though you kind of look like you might enjoy some of the gourmet. What do you weigh? Two ten? Twenty?”

The man stared at him for so long, a disbelieving look on his face. The suit was a nice one, Chuck realized. It was clearly tailored, black, black tie, black shirt underneath. A professional, possibly somebody who worked as a goon for a security company. The shaved head and sunglasses—indoors, the guy was wearing his Ray Bans inside—told Chuck he was probably ex-military. And very, very baffled. “Who _are_ you?”

“Wait, what?” Chuck asked. The guy didn’t know his name? But if they didn’t know his name, why were they coming after him, if they were secretly Fulcrum? Why were the…

It hit Chuck then: they weren’t after him. They must be after Andy Kohlmeier. The same Andy Kohlmeier Chuck had basically abandoned at the table. Chuck’s insides turned briefly to water.

He had to get to Andy. Something was definitely very, very wrong at Kanichen, and if Andy had stumbled across something, even something that wasn’t Fulcrum-related, he could wind up in a lot of trouble. Or dead.

The terror abated; a second wind took its place. Chuck’s hands stopped shaking. “Sorry,” he said, straightening up just the slightest bit. “But that would take too long to explain, and well, I’ve really got to run, so—”

“Stay right where you are!” Professional Security Goon said, but Chuck had already launched himself.

It was tricky with the floors slippery from grease and humidity, but he managed. Chuck sprinted hard for the back door, running along the length of the counter. Professional Security Goon would have cut him off at the end. Or would have, if Chuck hadn’t grabbed the lip of the counter and swung himself underneath. There was a low-hanging shelf below the counter that stored battered pots and pans, but led clear through to the other side. Cookware clattered as Chuck swung through like a gymnast on the uneven bars, sending his body hurtling parallel to the ground for a good distance. The thug didn’t have time to slow and instead skidded right past.

Chuck didn’t wait to see if he would regain his footing. The second he landed, he took off for the back door, arms swept out to spread pots, pans, foodstuffs, and chaos in his wake. He hit the back door running and exploded out into daylight, nearly crashing into railing. The kitchen led out onto a loading ramp. There was a bank across the alley, walls of windows through which he could see customers going about their daily business in the lobby.

They probably hadn’t even noticed the exodus of screaming chefs. Only in L.A., Chuck thought as he vaulted over the railing and sprinted for the side of the building. He’d have to circle around front, meet up with Bryce, and try to stop them from taking Andy. How, he had no idea. But he’d find a way. Somehow.

He careened around the side, fielded two fallen trash cans like an Olympic athlete, and subsequently stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk. He was still staggering a little when he rounded the front of Madame Cotillard’s.

It was sheer fortuitous circumstance that made him hit the tree. If he hadn’t, he would have run out right into the middle of the sidewalk—and right into the sightlines of the people that were loading Bryce Larkin and Andy Kohlmeier into a black, unmarked Dodge Sprinter. Chuck let out a small, silent yelp, and jumped behind the very same tree that he’d crashed into. They didn’t hear him.

But he wasn’t out of the woods yet. His pursuer from the kitchen rounded the side of the building from the alleyway at full tilt, his face ruddy and furious. Chuck might have been hidden from the van, but he was in plain sight to the other guy.

Oh, hell.

The other guy, sensing his prey, ran faster. Chuck’s brain kept up a mantra of _crap, crap, crap, what do I do_ , even as he patted his pockets, looking for something, anything that could help. His hand landed on the tranq gun and he wasted precious time hitting himself in the forehead. “Doh!”

Chuck yanked the tranq gun loose and aimed. He closed his eyes. “Please don’t miss, please don’t miss…”

The tranqs hit dead center: two darts, right to the top of the chest, little fletches catching the sunlight and glinting.

The goon dropped like a sack of potatoes. A very, very loud sack of potatoes. The sound of a body thumping into concrete made the two gentlemen in suits behind the van look over in Chuck’s direction. Chuck heard “What was that?” from one of them.

“I don’t know. Go check it out.”

“Dammit,” Chuck said, and crouched down to run for the side of the building. The raised patio of Madam Cotillard’s thankfully kept him hidden from view of those out on the main street, but he still felt like an idiot because passing cars next to him could see him quite clearly.

These were some gutsy villains, doing all of this in broad daylight.

He’d never reach the back of the building in time, he realized. The bad guy would be coming around the corner in less than ten seconds, and Chuck was fast, but he wasn’t that fast. There weren’t any convenient alcoves to hide in, and he doubted that he could fit into the overturned trash can he’d leapt over earlier.

That left only the cars parked against the curb. Chuck prayed that the nearest one wouldn’t have an overly sensitive car alarm, threw dignity to the wind, and dove for it. He rolled under the car, ignoring the grime and dirt that was getting into his best suit coat, just in time. Italian shoes pounded by on the sidewalk, followed by shouting: “Hey! Get the van over here! Mickey’s down!”

“Is he dead?”

“No, looks like…looks like somebody tranqued him!”

The second man swore, and Chuck squeezed his eyes closed, praying that they wouldn’t start searching underneath the cars. Bryce and Andy were in the van, yes, but he couldn’t face down a whole team of guys on his own. For that, he needed Casey and Sarah. And to get Casey and Sarah, he needed to stay un-kidnapped.

His eyes snapped open when the second man said, “We don’t have time for this. Get him in the van. We’ve wasted too much time already, and we’ve got the guy.”

“But if there’s somebody—”

“That was an order!”

Whoever these professionals were, they were good at their jobs: they had their fallen comrade up and loaded into the van in under thirty seconds. Still, Chuck stayed right where he was, not even daring to breathe, until he heard the squeal of van tires against pavement, smelled the reek of rubber hitting the asphalt. He waited a full minute and then scrambled out from under the car.

The van was gone. With a shaking hand, Chuck pulled out his cell phone and hit speed dial. Sarah and Casey really, really weren’t going to like this.


	51. Once More Onto the Beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless. — _Charles de Gaulle_

**4 FEBRUARY 2008**  
HIGHWAY ONE, CALIFORNIA  
 **15:48 PST**

“ETA on Walker?” Casey asked as he jerked the Crown Vic’s steering wheel a little too hard, nearly sending the beast of the car into the other lane. Since the other drivers on the freeway had long before learned to fear Casey’s driving, there wasn’t much of a danger of hitting anybody. Chuck thought that was impressive, especially for Los Angeles.

He checked the face of his watch, which also served as a GPS tracker for the team since Casey and Sarah had started wearing matching watches in D.C. “About thirty minutes.”

“With traffic?”

“Yeah, I included traffic in that.” Chuck’s knee jiggled. He felt weird, sitting in the passenger seat of the Crown Vic, a gun rubbing uncomfortably at the lower part of his back. Casey hadn’t even questioned him when he had shown up at Madame Cotillard’s. There had been no hemming and hawing about rescuing Bryce from Casey. The man had simply tossed Chuck a Sig Sauer and asked if Chuck had a way of tracking Bryce.

“As long as he’s got his watch, yeah,” Chuck had replied.

Which was why they were now wrestling with Los Angeles traffic, heading towards Malibu. The watch signal from Bryce’s watch stayed strong. Chuck hoped they hadn’t just tossed it in some random car to keep anybody who might try to follow them guessing. When he’d asked Casey about the possibility, Casey had only shrugged.

“Any idea where they might be headed?” Chuck asked.

“Bartowski, is there something about me that magically tells you I came up with a brilliant solution in the last five minutes?” Casey asked, a growl in his voice as he swerved into another lane to pass a slow-moving Winnebago.

Chuck eyed his partner. “Uh, yes?”

“Well, I didn’t. Any change in the signal?”

“No, it’s still ahead, heading southeast.”

“Disrespectful morons, don’t they know how much gas costs?” Casey groused.

Chuck didn’t blame him; Bryce’s signal had headed northwest from Los Angeles out of Madame Cotillard’s, battling through lunch hour traffic for a little while. At Ventura, however, the signal had taken a sharp turn for the south instead. They were traveling along Highway One now. The view of the ocean would have been stunning if it weren’t for the fact that they were tracking a hostage situation on wheels.

He’d had stranger days. That much he was sure of, though sometimes he couldn’t remember when.

“They must have been after…well, I can’t figure it out.” Chuck’s brow wrinkled as he tried to put it together. “Were they tracking Bryce? I mean, he’s been researching the company pretty hard, they could have caught onto him.”

“Probably did,” Casey said, swerving yet again. Derision flavored his voice.

“But Andy’s just as likely a possibility, don’t you think? I mean, he was onto something. I just don’t know what. But it was something.”

“I’m betting on Larkin.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like his face?”

“That’s fair,” Chuck said. He glanced down at the tracking device on his watch and frowned. “Wait a second…”

“What?”

“They’re definitely turning into Malibu. Seriously? Their destination was Malibu?”

“Could’ve driven straight there,” Casey said, glaring at the road. “Gas doesn’t grow on trees.”

“They’re professionals,” Chuck felt the need to point out. “They get paid more than we do.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“This route looks familiar.” Chuck frowned and dug for his phone, pulling up a map of Malibu and enlarging it for a better look. He compared his watch face to the map and his frown deepened. “No, that can’t be right.”

“What can’t be right?”

“Casey, they just turned onto Sergei Ezersky’s street.”

“Are you sure?”

“Tiny robots of death? Not something I’m likely to forget, scary Russian robot-juice-induced amnesia aside.”

“Well, we knew there were ties between Krolik and Kanichen,” Casey said. He jerked the car into a hard right, boldly cutting off a tractor trailer. “Guess this proves everything. Get on the horn to Walker, let her know the update. This just got tricky.”

“No kidding,” Chuck said as he moved to do as Casey ordered.

**4 FEBRUARY 2008  
 **SERGEI EZERSKY’S ESTATE**  
 **16:07 PST****

They had to park a good distance from Sergei Ezersky’s house and make their way up the beach, a prospect that made Casey grumble. Sand and combat boots, Chuck figured, didn’t mix. He kept quiet so as not to exacerbate Casey’s temper, but mostly, he was dealing with his own thoughts. Andy had been snatched from Madame Cotillard’s, and Bryce, too. They had been taken to the same estate Chuck and the others had breached back before their trip to D.C., the same estate that still made Sarah shudder just a tiny bit whenever it came up in conversation. Chuck didn’t blame her; the robots might have been cool, but they were freaky as hell.

And now Andy Kohlmeier and Bryce Larkin were being held hostage among those very same robots. For what purpose? What did Sergei Ezersky want with them? Maybe he really was the mad scientist Chuck suspected he might be, and he needed experimentation subjects. Too many late-night science fiction shows had Chuck wincing over the thought of Bryce and Andy being strapped to tables and experimented upon.

“Shouldn’t we be calling for back-up?”

“And risk Fulcrum having an inside man and knowing we’re onto them?” Casey kicked his boot outwards and sent sand spraying in an arc. “We’ve breached this place before, we can do it again.”

“They probably beefed up their security,” Chuck said. “It’s what I would’ve done.”

“Well, you’re smart. You’ll get around it.”

“Casey, did you just—”

“Chuck! Casey!”

Both men turned, Casey instinctively going for his gun. But it was just Sarah, jogging across the sand with her shoes in hand and the other hand tucked into the small of her back, likely on the hilt of her Smith & Wesson. The sunlight caught her hair perfectly for one still moment, causing almost a halo effect.

“About time, Walker,” Casey said even as Chuck didn’t move, just staring as Sarah approached. “What, were you worried we were going to have fun without you?”

“Always.” Sarah reached them and paused, as though uncertain. Her eyes hadn’t left Chuck’s, but he couldn’t read them or tell exactly what she was thinking. All he knew was that he was glad she was there. He was confused as hell as to why she’d left, and hurt that she had, but she was there now. And the beach, which had seemed endlessly huge and almost a little daunting, became just a beach. “Um, hi.”

Chuck didn’t reply. He stepped forward and hugged her, hard. “You’re back,” he said against her hair, not caring at all that Casey was probably watching them. “You’re back.”

Sarah had tensed at first, but now she relaxed. “I’m sorry,” she said, and stood on her tip-toes to give him a kiss that went on long enough for Casey to start making growling noises. She leaned back and seemed to be searching his face for something. For what, Chuck didn’t know. “I’m sorry that I took so long to get here. Do you know anything? Any updates?”

“No, we’re just going for a walk on the beach, Walker,” Casey said. “Of course, three’s a crowd.”

“I’m sorry, Casey, but you just can’t have my boyfriend,” Sarah deadpanned.

Chuck wisely stepped between the partners. “No, no updates,” he said, looking from Casey’s stormy countenance to Sarah. “I was just telling Casey that—oh, my God, you look good, you really shouldn’t leave for that long ever again. Am I babbling? I’m babbling. Right, before I was babbling, I was telling Casey that I’m not sure I can crack the security on this place twice. We got lucky the first time.”

Sarah just laughed and put her hands on either side of his face and looked at him for a long moment, so long that Chuck nearly began to squirm. The look on her face was impossible to decipher. “I’ve missed you so much. Let’s do this.”

“Did you not just hear—” Chuck started to say, but Sarah simply grabbed his hand and started pulling him along the beach, like they were just a couple—and their scary friend—out for a stroll.

“So, fill me in,” she said. “What’d I miss?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Larkin screwed up, Bartowski here only got away because he’s good at throwing vegetables.”

“And serving bowls.”

“And you’re positive they’re here?”

“My watch was linked up with Bryce’s,” Chuck said. “We were using it to record my conversation with Andy, so that he could hear. There was, you know, a possibility that they could have ditched the watch, but it led us here, and we know our record with coincidences.”

“The watch is still on Bryce,” Sarah said, nodding. “Well, this ought to be fun. Have we called for backup?”

“And let the bosses know we left Bartowski alone with Larkin?”

“Point, again. All right, what are our resources?”

One by one, they listed off everything they were carrying on them, from Chuck’s wits to Sarah’s hairclip (he wasn’t sure _why_ this was included in the weaponry list, but Sarah likely had a good reason). Casey had also grabbed one of the mini-computers from Castle before he’d gone to Simi Valley that morning.

When the others gave him puzzled looks, he fidgeted—as much as it was possible for Casey to fidget—and admitted that he’d wanted to double-check the security at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, make sure nothing bad had happened to Reagan’s resting grounds.

It made sense.

“Which one did you grab? Becky or Bob?” Chuck asked.

Sarah and Casey stared at him. “We need to talk about your habit of naming everything, Bartowski,” Casey said at length, and then added, “Becky. She’s faster.”

“Bob’s got a bigger hard drive, but I can work with that. Hand her over.”

While Casey and Sarah discussed the weak points they’d observed in their initial assessment of Ezersky Manor, Chuck booted up the computer and opened the various programs that they might need—though it was likely a suicide mission, going up against that security again. No matter how many times he pointed out that the security was going to be a problem, Casey or Sarah shrugged and countered that he’d figure it out.

They were going to need to have a talk about their unrelenting faith in him, and how misguided that was.

Finally, they reached Sergei Ezersky’s private beach. Walking in single file to hide their numbers, they climbed away from the water and up into the dunes that would provide some marginal cover. Chuck cringed whenever Becky got too close to the sand, but there wasn’t much he could do about the environment.

Sarah was elected to be the one to crawl to the top of the dune and get a good look out, as her blonde hair would blend in better with the sand.

“That’s a ridiculous argument,” she told Chuck.

“It’s either that or I hope your skivvies can double as a bikini, Walker,” Casey put in. “Feeling up to the Suzie Q scenario?”

“Actually, we should go with that plan, whatever Suzie Q means. I am intrigued by the possibilities.”

“Shut up, both of you,” Sarah said, but she smiled as she shucked off her coat and crawled to the top of the dune, keeping low. Casey and Chuck waited a few feet below her, Chuck still fussing with the computer even as his brain raced. He was now familiar with Fulcrum’s security algorithms, thanks to their little fiasco at the Heartbrake Hotel and everything that had come from that. Would that be of use? Or would Sergei Ezersky have changed everything on him?

The Russian toymaker was paranoid, after all.

“Okay, I’ve got what looks like an active patrol going on,” Sarah reported. “Two guards, no, three. They’re moving in Tetron Formation, semi-autos on all of them, but I can’t spot a fourth.”

“Camera situation?” Casey asked.

“It’s definitely changed since we were here last. I’ve got what looks like eyes on the southwest and southeast corners, another located squarely between them. There might be a blind spot, but I can’t get a close enough look to tell.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Chuck said, and had to crawl up the dune to Sarah. He was a lot less graceful about it. When he reached the top, he hunkered down out of sight and handed Sarah a cord. “Here, plug that into your binoculars, and hold please.”

“Isn’t that just like IT support?” Casey grumbled from below them.

Chuck pulled up the program he was looking for and loaded the specs from his Becky’s memory. “Okay, try and get a clear picture of each of the three cameras. Tell me when you’ve got the first one sighted.”

“Got it.”

Chuck took a screen-grab, and they repeated this for every camera Sarah could find. “Now what?” she asked.

“Dave and I were working on this program while I was in the bunker,” Chuck said, explaining even as he typed, “that could evaluate what a security camera might be seeing based on the lens type, aperture width, things like that. I’ve pulled up a map of the estate, and if the program works the way it’s supposed to, it’ll give us a detailed look at where we might find some blind spots.”

“Did you ever actually get any of your regular assignments done while you were in that bunker?” Casey asked.

“Sure. Mr. Carver was strict. Okay, here we go, the map is loading now. Huh, interesting.”

“What?” Casey and Sarah asked together.

“The apertures are all closed. At least, I think they are. If the program’s working right.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Cameras are off,” Sarah said. She peered hard into the binoculars again. “Chuck, how confident are you that the program’s right?”

“Uh, fifty-fifty? It’s never been field-tested, other than Digital Dave’s office.”

“Could explain why there are guards patrolling,” Casey said.

Sarah slid down a couple feet so that she was level with Chuck and chewed on her bottom lip, obviously contemplating the odds. She had dark circles under her eyes, Chuck noticed, like she’d had just as much trouble sleeping over the past few days as he had.

He didn’t know how he felt about that.

“Something’s definitely up,” she said. “Thoughts, Chuck?”

“I don’t know anything. Why are you asking me?”

“Because you were there, you saw how they operated. Anything that you remember might help now.”

“Oh. Um…” Chuck scrunched his eyes closed so that the computer screen wouldn’t distract him. “They were professional. Professional Security Goon was wearing Italian shoes.”

“And that matters why?”

“Well-dressed, could be high-paid.”

“Couldn’t ditch a tail,” Casey said, scowling. “Led us straight here.”

“To be fair, they probably aren’t used to their kidnapping victims having super watches from next century,” Chuck felt the need to say. When Casey made that noise in the back of his throat, he shrugged. “Just being fair.”

“Well, don’t be fair. Think.”

“Yeesh, yeesh, fine.”

“You two really missed me, didn’t you?” Sarah asked, looking from one to the other.

“Yes,” Chuck said as Casey shook his head no. When the partners glared at each other for a second, Chuck turned his attention back to the computer. “Okay, keep the binoculars trained on the guards for a minute, Sarah. I want to see if this motion tracking program we created will integrate in and give us a better idea of their patrols.”

“Or you could just type in Tetron formation,” Casey pointed out.

Both Sarah and Chuck looked at him.

“What?” he asked. “Even a nerd’s going to know what a Tetron formation is, I don’t care if he’s CIA or not. It’ll be in your program. Alter it to three guards instead of four.”

Chuck shrugged, opened up an input field, and typed it in. “Okay,” he said when orange lines spread across the three-dimensional topographical map. “That’s a little spooky. Here, we’ve got the layout. If they’re sticking to formation, these should be the weak points.”

Casey and Sarah studied the screen for a minute in silence. “Won’t be enough of a gap to get three people through at once and still provide cover,” Casey said at length. “We’ll have to split up. Walker?”

“I’m with Chuck.”

“I figured. You take the route closest to the access point? I’ll head north, come in forty seconds behind you.”

“Sure.”

“Wait, what, what’s going on?” Chuck asked, but Sarah and Casey were already synchronizing their watches. He fumbled to keep up and ended up tucking Becky into his pants pocket so that she wouldn’t be too sandy from all of the grit Casey and Sarah were kicking up. “Where are we—”

“C’mon,” Sarah said, and took off down the beach, headed south toward the rear of the estate. They’d come in from the back road when they had breached Sergei Ezersky’s estate last time, using the cover of night and city worker uniforms. Unless Sarah’s underwear really did double as a bikini, there was no cover now, no role they could possibly play. Unless Ezersky was willing to buy a well-armed, amorous couple that had wandered right past a bunch of “No Trespassing” signs and onto his lawn.

Plus, the Professional Security Goons had at least glimpsed Chuck at the restaurant.

“What are we doing?”

“You and I’ll get to the security node, you hack in, and then we’ll wait for the opportune moment.”

“And then?”

“Then we get inside, get Bryce and Andy, and figure out an escape plan from there.”

“Oh. Why do our plans always sound so simple when you sum them up?”

“Because you’re the troublemaking factor,” Sarah said, but she was smiling. “Stay on my six. The guards don’t seem to be patrolling around the node, so we should be pretty clear there.”

“Seems kind of sloppy.”

“They’re running a Tetron formation with three people instead of four. There are bound to be holes.”

Belatedly, Chuck remembered the poor doomed Mickey, whom he’d tranqued and left sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk. He must have been the fourth guard that was supposed to be on patrol. Even as the thought of tranquing somebody made him wince—he’d probably never forget the look on Sarah’s face from the Santa Monica Pier—Chuck did have appreciate the fortuitous circumstances. It meant that he and Sarah could sneak across the grass to the same security console they’d broken into back in November without being caught.

They loped along the security fence—the same one they’d scaled months before—and around the estate. The security console was out by the road that wrapped around Ezersky Manor, still near enough to the beach to give them easy access. It was hidden from most pedestrians by a grove of palm trees that also provided ample cover for both Chuck and Sarah to break into it. 

“Whoa,” he said when he saw the waist-high silver box. “Holy upgrade, Batman.”

“Looks like it,” Sarah said, and they crouched down to avoid being spotted by a guard. She leaned back against a palm tree. “Can you work with that?”

“If we can get it open, maybe.” Chuck eyed the lock doubtfully. “Given the fact that it was rather obvious we were here last time, they’ve leveled up in their security.”

“One thing at a time,” Sarah said, and pulled her hairclip loose, shaking her head so that the blonde hair cascaded down. Chuck experienced a brief intermission in thought that thankfully ended quickly, given that they were about to break into the most fearsome estate he’d ever encountered.

“We’re going to break in with hair utensils?” he asked, blinking at the clip.

“Yes. Keep a look out, and hope I don’t burn my fingers off.”

“Why would you…” But Sarah nudged him to the side, moving in close to the lock and wrapping her hairclip around it with hesitant fingers. Chuck kept an eye out for the guard, but he couldn’t deny that he was fascinated by what was happening in front of him. Sarah, moving carefully now, pulled out a small pin near the clip handle that he hadn’t noticed before. Instantly, the smell of burning filled the air. Chuck let out a mostly-silent yelp, but Sarah didn’t seem at all fazed when her hairclip melted through the solid metal lock in no time at all. “Holy crap!”

“Shhh.”

“Holy crap, Sarah, you kept that thing by your _head_?”

“Shh, they’ll hear us.” Sarah, careful to avoid the hairclip acid eroding the door, eased the door open a quarter inch. She slipped a bobby-pin from her hair and ran it through the space between the door and the concrete below the security box. “Doesn’t look like they rigged it. Here you go. Careful, don’t let any of the acid touch your skin.”

“Trust me, I’ll do my best.” It was an interesting workaround, but most of the acid had been used up inside the door and hadn’t landed on the concrete, allowing Chuck to wriggle into the security box. He got one over-warm, pleasant flash of memory, of Sarah pinning him to the ground to calm him from their last visit to casa Ezersky. He shook that off and focused.

“Okay, the lock wasn’t the only new thing,” he said, squirming so that he could pull Becky free. The console was just as cramped as he remembered, but there was a new monitor on the wall and a new set of wires running along every corner of the box. “They’ve got a new console in here and while the nerd in me appreciates just how shiny it is, I’m a little frightened by it, too. It’ll take a minute.”

“That’s fine. Casey just beeped me; he’s sitting tight.”

“Really? I didn’t hear him on the channel.”

“I don’t think he can talk right now. Guard must be nearby.”

It was a tense, humming five minutes while Becky ran the diagnostic on the Ezersky security system; Chuck felt every tendon and cord in his body flex at least once. His heart was in his throat, but at least his hands weren’t shaking as he fed a series of commands into Becky’s interface.

“Okay,” he said. “Good news.”

“Yeah?”

“Still the same Fulcrum interface as earlier. Means I should be in fairly quickly, even quicker if I had something to cut with.”

Sarah’s hand appeared over him, through the opening. It was clutching one of her slim throwing knives. “Like that?”

“You sure you want me to—I mean, we know what happens when I touch one of your—”

“Chuck.”

“Okay, okay. It’s just, I haven’t had any good experiences with your knives.” Gingerly, Chuck used the dull edge to pry open the panel next to his head. Inside was a mess of wires, a lot less organized than he had expected from professional work. His research on Ezersky’s estate, however, held up, allowing him to remember which wire to cut into. Unfortunately, it was painstaking and exacting work, which required his full attention.

“How’s it going in there?”

“Oh, you know. Just a party and a half.”

“I’m sure. Anything I can do to help?”

“I think I’m okay.”

“Okay.”

Chuck pulled his wallet out of his pocket so that he could use his spare wire splicers. “Why’d you leave?” he heard himself ask, the words out of his mouth before they were even realized inside his head.

There was a long pause outside the security box. “I’m still here, Chuck.”

Chuck took a page from Sarah’s book and didn’t reply. She’d been quiet too long; she knew exactly what he had been asking. And he was burning up with curiosity, a curiosity he had mostly managed to ignore in a video-game fueled oblivion since Sarah had taken off.

But now, once again in Sergei Ezersky’s security console box, he was all but dying to know. At least Casey wasn’t there to growl at him for not being a professional.

Finally, he heard a sigh. “I needed to think.”

“And you couldn’t think in Burbank?” he asked, echoing her words to him at the Grand Canyon. He pushed the last bit of wire into place and closed his eyes, praying that no alarms would go off.

None did.

“I couldn’t, no,” Sarah said. “It’s been a long four months, Chuck. And that’s not your fault, but ever since I got that call from Dave—”

“What call?”

Another pause followed, this time longer. Chuck entered a new line of code into Becky and checked his work. A pre-loader bar popped up on the screen. “What call?” he asked again.

“The…let’s just say since we left the bunker together,” she said. “It’s been a long four months, and I just, I needed a break.”

Sergei Ezersky’s interior security cameras popped up in quadrants on Becky’s screen. As Chuck had suspected, there were no outdoor cameras.

But the alarm inside the house was still active. Dammit.

“I wish,” he heard himself say as more and more feeds began taking over Becky’s tiny screen, “you would have told me you needed to get away.”

“I know. I didn’t know I did until I was practically on the road and I’d already written the note to you.”

Though it was playing with time Bryce and Andy likely didn’t have, and that made nerves gnaw away at his stomach lining, Chuck went silent. The final feeds from inside the house popped up, making Chuck experience a moment of déjà vu. He still didn’t remember everything that had happened the night he and Sarah had breached the estate, but the decor didn’t look like it had changed from those patchy memories he did have.

There weren’t any guards patrolling around inside the house. That was odd.

“Chuck?” Sarah asked. “Did you hear me?”

Chuck opened his mouth to reply that he had, but perhaps the question had been rhetorical, for Sarah just barreled on. “Things really haven’t ever slowed down, you know? And it’s not your fault, it never was and won’t ever be, but I just…after that thing with Beckman and Graham…”

Chuck’s brow furrowed. Why weren’t there any guards in the house? And where was Bryce? If he was in the house, he realized, he had to be in the room with the trapdoor. The one that would be impossible to breach without letting everybody in the house know they were coming.

Dammit.

“And I felt awful lying to you the whole time, I really did, but I just didn’t know how to tell you, and I didn’t know how you’d take it—”

“Uh, Sarah…”

“What?” Sarah’s voice went instantly into Spy Mode.

Belatedly, her words caught up to him. Had she been about to tell him something about herself? The guard thing could wait. Casey was sitting tight, after all.

“I already forgave you,” Chuck said. “It’s okay. I just…”

“Yeah,” Sarah said, surprising him. “I know.”

“I missed you,” Chuck said. He finally crawled free of the security box, careful to avoid his flesh being burned from his bones. “I didn’t like being away from you like that.”

“Me either. But I’m back and I won’t go away like that again.”

“I’m glad. Bad news, though.”

“What, you found a new girlfriend while I was away? That was quick.”

Chuck laughed without much humor in the noise. He was still confused, he realized, about Sarah’s motives for leaving, but he couldn’t precisely blame her, not when he’d pulled the same stunt himself. And he was hurt as well, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that, so it was easier pushed to the back of his mind and best forgotten.

“No,” he said. “I’m pretty sure you’re it for me. The bad news is that I can’t get into the in-house security from here. I need to get to the panel by the front porch. Sarah? You okay? You’re staring at me.”

Sarah jolted hard, as if he’d woken her from a daze. “Wh—the panel by the front porch?” she asked, sounding puzzled. “That’s open territory, you’d only be able to work for twenty or thirty seconds at a time.”

“I know, but it can’t be helped.”

“Dammit,” Sarah said without heat. She touched her ear. “Casey, change of plans. Sit tight.”

The light on their watches blinked in what Chuck assumed was a confirmation.

“Okay, wait for my call,” Sarah said as they crouched behind the acid-ridden console. “You know where it is?”

Chuck nodded.

“I’ll follow your lead, then. Wait for it, wait for it—and go!”

The minute the guard, a different goon, had rounded the corner of the estate, Chuck and Sarah took off sprinting. Adrenaline jumped through Chuck’s veins, but he didn’t even so much as stumble as they hurtled the fence—much easier this time—and dashed across the manicured lawn. He couldn’t help but observe that the place seemed much different and somehow friendlier during the day.

Holding his best friend from college hostage aside, of course.

He reached the bushes just ahead of Sarah and dove for it, letting out a small grunt when she crashed right into him. They had one short, terrified moment where the guard, a different one, came around the corner while the bush was still shaking, but it proved for naught. They weren’t noticed.

“Whew,” Chuck breathed, raising an eyebrow at their rather compromising position together in the bushes.

Sarah shushed him.

It took a few tries to get to the security console, just beside the wide, wraparound front porch. And it took them even longer for Chuck to open the panel, splice his iPhone to the wires, and open the Fulcruminator app that he and Dave had tweaked. Then it was a matter of crouching down in the bushes next to Sarah and waiting. Every minute felt more like an eternity.

“Okay, biggest window you’ll have, in twenty seconds.”

“How long?”

“A little less than a minute.” Sarah checked her watch. “Ready? As soon as he’s around the corner, go for it.”

Chuck counted to twenty and then lunged for the control panel. The Fulcruminator app, Chuck noticed, started up a little slow. He’d have to talk to Dave about it. They hadn’t considered it a problem when they had been beta testing it back in November, but now that his life was kind of on the line, every single second seemed to matter in a way it never had before.

“Casey still good?” he asked as he tapped a sequence into his phone.

“He’s fine, you focus on that.”

“Okay. But, just out of curiosity, how do you know for sure?”

“I’m magical,” Sarah said. “Now focus.”

“When you put it that way…” Chuck turned back to the iPhone and the application. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a clock ticked on and on, counting ten seconds, twenty, thirty, ninety, two hundred.

“Thirty seconds,” Sarah said.

“Wait, really?”

“Yes. Focus, Chuck!”

The app returned the pinged data, making Chuck frown. The security for the trapdoor room, the Room of the Scary Roborabbits, was a whole different branch in the program. It was accessible, but it couldn’t be hacked.

The rest of the house, however, could be compromised, and almost astonishingly easy.

“Ten seconds,” Sarah hissed.

As a team, though, they were useless unless they could break silently into that room.

“Five!”

“Fine, fine, okay, yeesh.” Chuck closed the console over his iPhone and dove back next to Sarah in the bushes just in time for the guard to come around the corner on his sweep. They both stayed silent, barely breathing, as the idea continued to percolate in Chuck’s head.

The guard finally ambled out of sight, taking his dear, sweet time about it.

“Hey, Sarah, is your watch the SOMX-Ten or Eleven?” Chuck whispered when the guard was out of earshot.

Sarah frowned. “I have no idea. Hey, warn me before you do that,” she said as Chuck grabbed her wrist to check out her watch face. ”What are you thinking?”

“Oh, good, it’s the Ten. That’s good. I was worried Dave might have given you the Eleven.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just a difference in upgrades. I’m going to set up the configuration to take down the security, give me a minute.”

The idea was brewing hard and fast now, and Sarah and Casey really were not going to like what he had in mind. But they couldn’t get into that vault room without a distraction, and Sarah’s watch alone couldn’t take out the signal. When the idea had fully formed in his head, Chuck winced.

 _Here goes nothing_ , he thought, and stood when the guard was finally out of sight. Running the Fulcruminator app to do what he needed it to do only took about five seconds; there was a blinking green light at the bottom of the app to assure him that the security had been looped and knocked out in the manor. He opened up the notepad function and typed furiously.

If he tried to explain, Sarah would only veto him.

“Chuck!” Sarah tugged on his pant leg. ”Get down! The guard’s coming!”

“Please work,” Chuck said, mostly to himself. He hurriedly disconnected the iPhone. “Please work, please work.”

“Chuck! Hurry!”

But Chuck didn’t move. Instead, he stayed facing the console, flinching a little inside as though Sarah’s gaze burned him. And he knew from previous experience that it actually could.

“Did you not hear me? Get dow—oh, sh—”

Just as the guard came around the corner, Chuck dropped his cell phone, and kicked it to the side. He had one split-second to regret every part of his latest hare-brained scheme before the guard spotted him and let out a “Hey!”

“Whoa!” Chuck said, jumping back and clear of where Sarah was hiding in the bushes. “Whoa, please don’t shoot, please don’t kill me—”

The guard had his gun raised already and was running towards Chuck, looking annoyed. “This estate is private property and—you! Hands up!”

Well, that answered the question of whether or not the guard had been one of the goons at the restaurant. They must have seen him before Chuck had taken off into the kitchen. When the gun twitched in his direction, Chuck threw dignity to the wind and scurried out of the bushes, far away from Sarah and his dropped iPhone. She had to know by now, he figured, that he’d done this on purpose.

Boy, was he going to hear about this later, assuming they all got out of this alive.

The guard reached out a hand and shoved Chuck to his knees. “What are you doing here?” the guard asked, keeping the weapon trained on Chuck. 

Chuck’s mouth went completely dry at being so close to the AK-47. “I—I followed you. Mr. Kohlmeier seemed like he was in trouble, and I wanted to help.”

“What, you think you’re some kind of superhero?”

“N-no. Just a normal guy.”

The guard’s eyes narrowed. “You call the police?”

“No—no, I thought I’d just see what was going on, I didn’t call anybody, I swear. I just followed your—your van, and then I was going to hack the cameras before I called the cops!” Was his voice normally that high-pitched? He wasn’t afraid of the guard so much as he was afraid the guard was going to do something foolish, like pistol-whip him and get an eye-socket full of throwing knife for his trouble. “What’s going on? I don’t understand. What do you want with Mr. Kohlmeier? He’s a good guy!”

“Shut up.” The guard kept the gun trained on him and touched his ear. “Justin, Brett, we’ve got an intruder. Same guy from the restaurant.”

A pause.

“No, not the snotty waiter. The goofy-looking one, with the hair.”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?” Chuck asked, feeling insulted.

“Ten-four.” The guard reached down and roughly yanked Chuck to his feet, his glare deepening when Chuck deliberately tottered like a building about to fall. Before Chuck could fully regain his bearings, he found himself being towed toward the house. “Move it.”

“Hey! Hey, where are we—no, hey, wait, I have rights!”

“You have the right to shut the hell up. My boss doesn’t like intruders.”

“Who the hell is your boss?”

“Shut up.” The guard hauled him up onto the porch, past the post Chuck vaguely remembered grabbing when the not-real earthquake had ravaged the Ezersky manor, and inside the house. Chuck picked up more detail this time, as the room wasn’t pitch black. Most spies would have picked up more, he imagined, but the guard was frog-marching him through pretty quickly, down the hallway, up the stairs, to the computer room that looked deliberately bland. “You keep your mouth _shut_ , you hear me? My boss doesn’t tolerate much, and I’d hate for you to get shot before all of this is over.”

“Wha-what are you talking about?”

The guard moved around Chuck, keeping the gun on him, and bent at the waist, pulling up the trapdoor. Flop sweat immediately sprouted down Chuck’s back.

He really, really did not want to face the roborabbits again.

The guard didn’t notice. “Get down there. And keep your mouth shut.”

“Why is there a trapdoor in the floor?” Chuck asked. The glare he received in reply made him weakly pantomime zipping up his lip and throwing away the key. Carefully, he sat on the edge of the trapdoor hole so that he could get his feet aligned. He made a big show of slipping—and when the guard grabbed him in exasperation, pushing the green button on the side of his watch.

“Oops, sorry, butterfingers—”

“Just get down there.”

Chuck clambered down the rest of the ladder, his stomach roiling, the guard following him down. When Chuck turned, he blinked.

The shelves, the same ones that ran all the way alongside the walls of the weird vault/trapdoor room, were completely empty of little robots. What the hell? Not a single Tyrannosaurus or thermal-detonator-roborabbit in sight. Even the robot arm that had neatly clocked him on his first visit had vanished. The shelves and floor panels still lit up with that eerie white light, though.

It felt abandoned. Or it would have, if there weren’t three people handcuffed to various shelves. Chuck recognized two of them right away: Bryce Larkin, chained closest to the ladder, lifted his head and gave Chuck an inscrutable look. Andy Kohlmeier, about four feet behind him, had a more obvious reaction. “Chuck! What are you doing here?”

Chuck opened his mouth to reply, but the guard smacked him on the shoulder blade with the butt of the rifle. “Shut up. Feet apart, face the wall.”

“What for—ow! Okay, okay.” Chuck didn’t dare look at Bryce as he obeyed the guard and was subsequently patted down. The guard pulled out the gun. “Hey, computer security can get rough. I’m licensed to carry that.”

“Is there some connection between your brain and your mouth that’s broken? Shut the hell up.”

When Chuck had been fully searched—the guard didn’t take his watch, praise be—he was handcuffed, just like the others in the room, to one of the shelves, nearer the back. The guard gave them all one final glare and, taking Chuck’s tranq gun, headed out.

Instantly, Andy rounded on him. “What have you done? Why are you here?”

“I don’t know! I saw them grab you and I followed, but the guard grabbed me when I was trying to hack through the security—”

“You were trying to _what_?” the third man, the one Chuck didn’t know, asked. He gave Chuck a scandalized look. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

Chuck held his hands up, as best as he could with one being handcuffed to the shelf. “Me, I’m nobody, just some computer security guy. Who are _you_?”

The man stared back at Chuck for a full minute. He was short, barely rising to Chuck’s shoulder, and Chuck would place him somewhere on the side of comfortably just past middle age. A trim goatee and a full head of cloud-white hair contrasted easily with the tanned skin of somebody who spent a great deal of time outdoors.

“I, my dear boy,” he said, “am Sergei Ezersky, and that’s _my_ security you were trying to break.”

Chuck looked from the paranoid Russian toymaker to the handcuffs chaining him to the shelf and said the only thing that came to mind: “Okay, now I’m officially confused.”


	52. The Return of TX-1138

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hell is other robots. — _Matt Groening_

**4 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**EZERSKY MANOR VAULT ROOM**   
**15:47 PST**

Chuck stared at Sergei Ezersky. And when the proper neurons and synapses that would have informed him how this situation worked refused to fire, he stared harder. It did nothing. 

“You’re not the only one,” Andy said helpfully from where he was handcuffed across the aisle, a little ahead of Chuck. “I am also very, very confused. What the hell is going on?”

“You just said you’re Sergei Ezersky, really?” Chuck continued to stare. “Really?”

“What?” Sergei Ezersky drew all five foot four inches of himself up, giving Chuck an affronted look. “Why would I lie to you? Who are you?”

A crazed Russian toymaker should be disheveled, Chuck thought. He should wear a crazy vest and a pince-nez eyeglass, and he should carry some kind of walking stick with an odd carving for a handle. Something kooky. _Anything._ Sergei Ezersky, on the other hand, barely had an accent. Sure, his hair resembled Albert Einstein’s, but that hardly made up for Chuck’s months of wondering what the man looked like as they made one Google search after the next, trying to get a good look at the elusive Russian toymaker.

“He’s Chuck Bartowski,” Bryce said with a sigh, sounding annoyed.

“Bryce!”

“Wait,” Andy said, looking between Chuck and Bryce. “You two know each other? What’s going on?”

“I work for Chuck,” Bryce said.

“You do?”

“Shut up, Chuck.”

“Well, that’s not a very nice way to talk to your boss,” Chuck said, now puzzled.

Bryce gave Andy and Ezersky a long-suffering look. “Chuck and I were roommates in college. When I say I work for him, I mean I helped him found his company. We run computer security. Well, Chuck does.”

“And what do you do?”

“I keep an eye on Chuck.” Bryce tugged at the handcuffs chaining him to the shelf.

“Not very well, apparently,” Ezersky said, and both Chuck and Bryce gave him dirty looks. “Perhaps you two could care to enlighten the rest of us as to how you became involved in this little problem?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps you could care to enlighten us to what the problem actually is,” Bryce said.

“What he said,” Chuck said.

“Gentlemen in masks broke into my home this morning and locked me in this room. I do not know what they want. I do not know what they came for, nor have they answered my repeated demands that they tell me anything.” Ezersky gave a very serious frown. “I do not recognize any of them. And some time ago—I apologize that I cannot be more exact, but I do not have my watch—they brought two of you down here and chained them up with me. I knew nothing until you arrived, and I know even less, except that some stranger has been trying to mess with my security.”

He scowled at Chuck. 

“Well, that’s nice,” Chuck said. The story had been vague despite Ezersky’s precise way of speaking. Also, not helpful at all. “So, no idea who’s behind this? Any of you?”

Bryce shook his head. 

“None,” Andy said. “They snatched us from the restaurant and nobody’s said a thing. I didn’t know you were following us, Chuck.”

“And attempting to crack my security,” Ezersky said.

“In the name of good! And to be fair, it was really tough to crack.”

This clearly did not help Chuck’s case. He hunched his shoulders a little, trying not to glance too often at his watch and think about just how horribly Sarah was going to murder him, and focused instead on Andy and Bryce. “Are you okay? When I saw them grab you at the restaurant…”

“I’m fine,” Andy said, though he looked pale. 

“Why did you follow us?” Bryce said, widening his eyes briefly at Chuck, probably to warn him to be careful. About what, Chuck wasn’t sure. “And how? You’re not supposed to get involved in this side of the business!”

“What was I supposed to do? Guys in a scary van grabbed you off the street!”

“You belong behind a computer screen, Chuck, not in a—” Bryce made a big show of looking around. “Wherever the hell we are.”

“In my vault,” Ezersky said through his teeth.

“Why do you have a vault? There’s nothing in here but us. Were you robbed?” 

“Of course not!” Ezersky gave Chuck yet another affronted look.

Chuck personally didn’t think that it was actually too much of an impossible concept, given that at least two people had cracked the security at the Ezersky Manor that day. “Then why is your vault empty of everything except four men handcuffed to shelves?” 

“Do me a favor, Mr. Bartowski. Please shut up.”

At least he’d said please. Chuck was grateful they’d handcuffed him to the rear of the vault, where the other men would have to twist to look at him. And none of them actually were doing so—Bryce was staring resolutely at the door, Andy at the ceiling, and Sergei Ezersky at a fixed point in front of him—which let Chuck twist his watch face around and look at the screen. Two of the blue dots on it were close together, and two were still roaming the estate. Casey and Sarah hadn’t broken into the house yet.

Oh, good. More time until they tried to kill him. Hopefully, Sarah followed the instructions he’d typed into his iPhone before he’d tossed it at her. Otherwise, this plan wasn’t going to work and it would be time to move to Plan B. As he was now handcuffed inside a vault that should have been full of robot rabbits and robotic toy dinosaurs, Chuck would have no idea what Plan B was. If Casey was behind it, it probably involved shooting “a lot of somebodies.”

At least, like Chuck had always told Sarah, the NSA agent was consistent.

Chuck leaned forward, toward Andy. “So you don’t have any idea what’s going on?” he asked. Apparently this bothered Ezersky: the other man rolled his eyes, and Chuck wanted to point out that Ezersky didn’t have the market cornered on exasperation. After all those months of looking into Ezersky and Krolik Enterprises, meeting a non-eccentric toymaker was an extreme letdown.

“None,” Andy said. “Do you?”

“No.”

“But we’re about to find out,” Bryce said, and the others looked at him.

Before Chuck could ask how he knew, he heard it himself: footsteps. Not from the ceiling of the vault, which was where he would expect any others to come from. No, he heard these footsteps behind him, where there was nothing but wall.

Warily, he turned. His eyes nearly popped out of his head when four lines appeared in the wall like some sort of science fiction special effect. His rational mind told him it was likely panels shifting to blend in perfectly with the rest of the wall. And it was _neat_. The four cracks joined at the corners to form what was obviously a door.

“What the hell?” Andy asked.

“What?” Ezersky appeared completely unaffected. “It is a door. You have never seen a door before?”

“Your secret vault has _another_ vault?” Chuck said, sounding a little breathless even to his own ears. That was why, he figured, nothing had shown up on the surveillance video. Not only did Sergei Ezersky’s house have a secret room, it apparently had an entire secret floor.

He was suddenly willing to forgive Ezersky quite a lot of his testiness.

The door slid open with the same hissing puff Chuck had heard on every single episode of _Star Trek_ ever filmed, and Chuck forgave Ezersky for the rest of it on the spot.

That was, until his brain caught up with him.

Behind him, Andy gasped. “Piers?”

Ezersky said, “Faulkner? What the hell?”

Bryce appeared not to have any reaction whatsoever.

Piers Faulkner, Andy Kohlmeier’s boss and the man Prometheus was investigating closely, stood in the doorway, perfectly lit from a red light behind him. Chuck hadn’t liked him at the birthday party they’d crashed. At the time, he’d attributed it to the fact that the man had been hard-core hitting on Sarah.

But maybe he’d been wrong. By all appearances, Piers Faulkner might just be a douche-bag in general, and an evil one at that.

“Hello, Andy,” Piers said, adjusting his glasses. “Sorry about the accommodations. You understand, though.”

“No, I really, really don’t,” Chuck said.

Faulkner glanced at him and dismissed him just as quickly. “And you brought guests. How charming.”

“What the hell is going on, Piers?” Andy asked.

Ezersky wasn’t one to be left out, either. “What are you doing in my house? Release me at once!”

“No can do, Sergei.” Piers folded his arms over his chest, giving Bryce a once-over and ignoring him as easily as he’d dismissed Chuck. “We have a problem, gentlemen.”

“You think?”

“Andy, you should know better.”

“Piers, have you gone insane? If this is some kind of joke, it’s really not funny. Did Clancy put you up to this? Is he here?” Andy looked around the room as though somebody had materialized. But it was only the four of them, handcuffed into helplessness. “What is going _on_ , Piers?”

“What’s going on is that, like I said, we have a problem.” Piers looked around at each of them. “Two interlopers, one who has been spying on my company for months.”

His gaze landed on Bryce. Bryce stared back without saying a word.

“The other who was about to be paid to spy on my company.” Now Piers glared at Chuck. “Whatever you did to compromise the perimeter security, Mr. Bartowski, that was a nice trick. But you should be more careful in the future.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Chuck said. He didn’t dare glance at his watch. Faulkner’s men hadn’t seen it as a threat, and he had no intention of tipping them off now. Not when Casey and Sarah were probably so close.

“That is, of course, provided we let you live.”

“Damn,” Bryce said. He let out a low whistle and tilted his head, almost sarcastically. “You really do know how to monologue. I’ve come across some monologuers in my day, Mr. F, but you sure take the cake.”

Faulkner outright ignored him. “The rest of our problem,” he said again, as though he’d never been interrupted at all, “lies with you gentlemen.” His gaze fell on Andy. “I told you when I brought you over from Austria there were things you wouldn’t understand and that you were to ignore them.”

“Evidently,” Andy said, his jaw tight.

Piers turned to face Ezersky now and folded his arms over his chest. “And you. You were supposed to deliver the Heidelberg Project two months ago.”

Ezersky rolled his eyes. “Would you rather I deliver a faulty program? There are glitches, and your original timeline was unrealistic, even for a man of my brilliance.”

Chuck exchanged a quick glance with Bryce over the term “Heidelberg Project,” as that was one they hadn’t come across in all of their research into Krolik and Ezersky.

“Then how do you explain this, Mr. Ezersky?” Piers gestured. A man in all black fatigues and a tactical helmet came in from the secret door. He handed Faulkner a file and Faulkner delicately removed a single sheet of paper. “Seems the Ukrainians think they’re in a bidding war with Kanichen, Mr. Ezersky.” 

Faulkner held the sheet to the light. “I told myself that there’s no possible way somebody so upstanding as Mr. Ezersky would encourage a company like Kanichen to fund his research only to turn around and undercut the company by selling his research to a group like the Ukrainians.”

“It is possible, _Mr_. Faulkner, that you are believing fiction made up by the Ukrainians in order to create dissension, as they say, in the ranks.”

“It is,” Faulkner said. “But with this encrypted communiqué, my men—the same ones Mr. Kohlmeier over here nearly incriminated, by the way—think otherwise. And I trust those men far more than I trust you. So you see my problem.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” Bryce said, rolling his eyes. “We’ve all got problems, Faulkner. What are we really doing here? Please don’t tell me you’ve abducted us solely to talk us to death. There are kinder ways to get rid of people.”

“Guard,” Faulkner said.

Without missing a beat, the guard stepped forward and pistol-whipped Bryce. Chuck recoiled, the handcuffs cutting into his wrists, at the sound of gun handle meeting skull. “Hey!”

“Shut up, Bartowski, or the same thing happens to you.”

Chuck opened his mouth to protest, but Bryce, all but dangling by his own handcuffs now, grunted. “Do what the man says, Chuck.”

He didn’t want to, but he didn’t have much of a chance. Chuck risked a glance at his watch; Sarah and Casey, he determined, couldn’t get there fast enough. But the blue dots on Chuck’s watch interface were still outside the manor. The guards must be getting in the way.

“Mr. Faulkner, I would in no way betray your company for the Ukrainians, of all people,” Ezersky said, still sounding offended. “I am a man of honor.”

“I seriously doubt that, which is why you’ll stay right where you are until we’re through.”

“Through with what?” Chuck asked.

Bryce hissed. 

Faulkner didn’t say “Guard” this time. He merely inclined his head toward Chuck. As the guard neared, Chuck tensed, but the pistol-whip never came. Instead, the guard kneed him hard in the solar plexus. Chuck grunted and went forward hard enough to hurt his wrists, but a pistol-whipping would have been much worse.

It apparently didn’t stop him from being Chuck, though. “Was that it?” he said, wheezing a little.

“Guard,” Faulkner said.

The second knee to the stomach hurt worse. “I was being sarcastic,” Chuck wheezed as he saw stars burst at the edges of his vision. “Get a sense of humor, will you?”

“Shut up,” Andy told him. “Look, Piers, let these two go. Your problem is with me and Ezersky.”

“No. I need a demonstration,” Faulkner said, “and they’ll do nicely, I think.” He pointed a finger at Chuck. “One for the money and,” the finger turned toward Bryce, “two for the show. Really drives the point home.”

Oh, God, Chuck thought. He really is going to kill us in front of Andy and Ezersky like some old-school Bond villain. How…cliché. And yet, still terrifying.

“What? Piers, no!” Andy strained against his bonds. “You can’t be—what the hell has gotten into you? Please, this has to be a joke, right?”

“Not even gonna happen, Faulkner,” Bryce said. “Won’t be some demonstration for you.”

“Ditto,” Chuck said.

He checked his watch. The blue dots were at the front door of the manor. He glanced up at the trapdoor once. Soon, they’d be there, and Sarah’s watch would provide just the necessary EMP blast that would disable the lock, a process Chuck had started with his own watch. Hopefully, the plan would work the way he hoped and he’d be able to distract everybody in the room so that Sarah could sneak in silently and take them out.

Faulkner eyed them. “Guard,” was all he said.

Chuck flinched as the guard headed his direction, but the man kept walking—and pistol-whipped Bryce again. Bryce fell onto his knees.

“This is tiresome. Guards!” Faulkner shouted this at the roof rather than the door that was still behind him. “Now,” he said to the room at large, “let’s see if I got my money’s worth when I hired this company. I tell you, you get so much more out of the private sector.”

“Not Fulcrum?” Bryce asked, one eyebrow going high.

Oh, God, Chuck thought, they’re going to pistol-whip him again.

Faulkner only smiled. They heard the unmistakable hiss of the trapdoor opening in the ceiling and then the clatter of combat boots on the ladder rungs. Two men dressed like the first guard—one of whom had captured Chuck outside—were soon standing by the ladder.

“Take these two upstairs,” Faulkner said, pointing at Chuck and Bryce in turn. “Be careful. The handsome one might have trouble walking.”

“Which one’s the handsome one?” Chuck asked, though he’d always felt that one was rather obvious. If the guards had come through the house, Sarah and Casey had probably had to find somewhere to hide, which meant they’d been delayed.

And if they took Bryce and Chuck upstairs, his whole reason for being a decoy had just become moot. Sarah really would kill him.

“If you’re referring to me,” he said as the guards stopped in confusion, “you don’t need to worry about me. I can walk just fine, no thanks to Señor Horrible over here.” He jerked his head at the pistol-whip-happy guard that was still standing by Bryce, and prayed that he wouldn’t suffer the same fate.

Faulkner just looked bored. “Feel free to rough up the ugly one, too.”

“Hey!” Chuck said. The blue dots on his watch were right over the trapdoor, he saw. Which meant that—surely enough, his watch started blinking red. “I think that’s rather completely unfair, don’t you think? I may not be handsome in the classical sense, but some might consider me as having raw appeal, you know? Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, you know what I’m saying?”

Testiness spread over Faulkner’s face. “On second thought, just hit him.”

Oh, God, please don’t knock me out, Chuck thought. He braced himself for the pistol-whip that he knew he surely couldn’t avoid. His thumb crept towards his watch, pushing the small red button at the very bottom.

The guard hit him. It wasn’t the butt of a handgun, but damn, it hurt like hell. And Chuck made sure to scream good and loud, dignity be damned.

He made sure to scream just loud enough, in fact, that nobody else in the room could possibly have heard the subtle hiss of the trapdoor unlocking itself and sliding open as Sarah disengaged the lock.

It happened quickly when it happened, thankfully. Chuck, reeling, straightened—and Sarah’s upper body popped through the ceiling upside down. He had a split-second to react before gunshots rang through the room like concussive missiles. He yelped.

Two of the guards weren’t nearly so lucky. His ears were still ringing when their bodies hit the floor. He looked up to see Sarah’s eyes widen before she was yanked upward and out of sight.

“After her!” Faulkner ran past Chuck for the back door of the vault, slamming his shoulder into Chuck as he did so. Chuck wheezed.

The minute the remaining guard was up the ladder, Bryce was beside Chuck, reaching for his handcuffs. “Bryce? You were free this whole time?”

“Take this, get Andy loose.” Bryce shoved a handcuff key into his hand and moved to deal with Sergei Ezersky.

Dazed, a high-pitched whine from the gunshots still making his head hurt, Chuck did the same. Two guards were down, several more still roaming the estate, and Piers Faulkner had gone through the secret door. His brain categorized everything, already formulating a plan—and Sarah and Casey dropped through the trapdoor. 

“Wh-what?” Chuck asked, drawing up short. “C-Casey? Sarah? How’d you get past—”

“One guard? Piece of cake, moron. What in Sam Hell is going on, Larkin?”

“Faulkner,” Bryce said, coughing. Blood was pouring from a wound on his forehead, Chuck saw now. “Looks like inter-Fulcrum politics gone wrong. Nice of you to show.”

“Are you okay?” Sarah asked.

Bryce put his hand over the copiously-flowing cut. “Just dandy.”

“Good, hold on a minute.” Sarah walked straight up to Chuck. “Are _you_ okay?”

“I’m fine, just a little roughed—” 

“Good.” She then punched him in the arm.

“Ow!”

The hits didn’t stop coming, but this time Chuck only let out a wheeze because Sarah hugged him too hard. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said, mostly against his shirt.

“Who are you people?” Ezersky asked.

Sarah pulled back from Chuck and blinked at him. “Who are _you_?”

“No time for that now. Casey, Sarah, Piers Faulkner is our Fulcrum mole. He went through there.” Bryce pointed at the door—or what had been a door the minute before. It was smooth wall now.

“Maybe you should get that head-wound checked, Larkin—”

Ezersky placed his hand, shaking ever so slightly, against the wall. Instantly, the four lines reappeared and formed a door.

“What was that, Casey?” Bryce asked.

“Shut up. Take Bartowski and get him and these other yahoos out of here. Try not to get yourself kidnapped again. C’mon, Walker. I need a second.”

“Stay with Bryce. Don’t get shot,” Sarah said, pointing at Chuck. “We’re talking about this later.”

“Can’t wait,” he called after her. To the others, he said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

It took them a minute to escape, as they had to strip the guards of weapons. And when Bryce swayed before he could reach the ladder, Chuck insisted on going first. He had one brief and terrifyingly realistic vision of himself getting shot in the head before he peeked over the top of the trapdoor into the room beyond, but the other guards hadn’t arrived yet. 

It would be a fitting tribute to Graham and Beckman if their precious Intersect took one to the head, wouldn’t it?

He scrambled off of the ladder and over to the wall just inside the door, the stolen pistol from the guard raised. Anybody coming in wouldn’t see him until it was too late. Perhaps he’d learned more tactics from playing Call of Duty with Casey than he had originally thought.

Andy had to help Bryce up the ladder; the spy was swaying, his eyes glassy. Sweat had sprouted, mixing with the blood flowing from the cut above his eyebrow.

“Doing okay, Bryce?”

“I’m fine. Sure you know how to use that thing?” Bryce nodded at the gun in Chuck’s hands.

“Point and shoot?”

“Point and shoot. Take lead? I don’t know how fast my reflexes are, but I’ve got your back.”

“You have an overwhelming amount of faith in me.” Chuck realized he was probably the only person who knew the layout of the Ezersky Manor. Of course, they did have Ezersky himself with them. “Sergei, with me.”

“I don’t think—”

“You want to watch your old employer shoot a couple of people in the head to teach you a lesson?” Bryce asked. “Do what the man says. Andy, you mind?”

“I’ve got it,” Andy said, grabbing Bryce’s left arm and pulling it across his shoulders. “We’ll follow you, Chuck. And if we get out of this, you’re totally getting a raise. Also, I plan on quitting.”

“Good move. Let’s go.” 

It felt weird, as Sarah and Casey were the ones that took point on their raids, but now it was him casing the room, using the same hand signals to communicate with his team. Once more, he was taken back to Call of Duty, though he knew better than to make that comment. Bryce might think it was funny normally, but the aching head might get in the way of that.

Chuck led the way down the stairs. Every foot gained felt like an eternity, with his heart in his throat. Had Sarah and Casey caught up to Piers Faulkner? Were they okay? Would they all make it out of this one alive?

At the base of the stairs, he signaled for the group to halt so that he could check the corner. The entryway wasn’t far off, but the first floor of the Ezersky Manor was a veritable maze of interconnecting airy rooms with tall ceilings and excellent lighting. It was beautifully decorated, but a tactical nightmare, as the minimalist decor didn’t allow for much cover, and there were several entrances and exits for each room. Chuck pulled up his mental map of the place to figure out if there was a better route, decided there wasn’t, and opted to go for it.

He made it two steps.

The sound of something squeaking behind him made him whirl, gun raised. It wasn’t an enemy guard, though. Ezersky had opened some kind of panel in the wall very similar to his secret door in the vault.

“Hey!” Bryce and Andy, stumbling like a couple of drunks thanks to Bryce’s possible brain damage, pulled up short. “What are you doing?”

Ezersky reached into the wall, and Chuck’s blood ran cold. Nestled in the other man’s hand was one of the very same roborabbits that freaked Sarah out.

“What the hell is that?” Andy asked.

Chuck surprised himself by taking a shooter’s stance and pointing the handgun at Ezersky. “Put that back,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound like his own.

Sergei gave him a strange look, the roborabbit still in hand. It was a little smaller than Chuck remembered, but other than that, every detail was perfectly etched into Chuck’s mind. “You know what this is, young man?”

“I know exactly what that is. Put it back.”

Ezersky’s eyes narrowed. “I intend only to allow them to hunt down Faulkner.”

“And my girlfriend and my partner are in this house, too. No way in hell are you releasing that. _Put it back_.”

“Why do I get the feeling,” Andy asked, “that there is so much more going on that I don’t know about?”

“We can explain later,” Bryce said. “Let’s move.”

“Not until he closes and locks that panel,” Chuck said, still pointing the gun at Ezersky.

The Russian rolled his eyes and made a big show of shutting the panel door and placing his hand on the wall next to it until the lines retracted. “There,” he said. “Happy?”

A gunshot answered him.

“Holy frak!” Chuck jumped back, expecting blood to spurt out, but a small hole appeared in the very same panel Ezersky had just closed. Chuck spun, searching for the enemy.

Two things happened at once.

Bryce hit him like a linebacker going after the star quarterback.

Another gunshot pierced the air.

Chuck felt Bryce jerk once against him, something like a seizure. They hit the wooden tiles with a thud that had the air escaping Chuck’s lungs in one rush. “Stay down!” Bryce said as Andy and Ezersky hit the deck, too. Swearing, the spy half-crawled, half-hauled Chuck to a wall. They flattened themselves against it, hiding out of the shooter’s range.

“Why,” Chuck said, panting, “does it feel like we’ve done this before?”

“Because we have?” Bryce wiped away the flow of blood from his eyes and checked the clip in his gun. “Warehouse in October, remember? I thought you were going to wet yourself.”

“Thanks, Bryce.”

“Oh, relax, I’m just kidding.” Bryce winced.

“What? What is it?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” But Bryce flinched again, his hand going to his side. “Okay, maybe I got shot a little.”

“A _little_?”

“Chuck, is now really the time?”

“No, but honestly, you’re either shot or you’re not and _a little_ is kind of misleading, don’t you think?”

“I think he’s in the next room,” Bryce said, evidently going with Casey’s usual tactic of ignoring Chuck. Bryce was clearly gritting his teeth now, though that could be attributed to either the multiple blows to the head or the bullet wound. “Probably calling for backup.”

“Perfect. Any way to draw him out, do you think?”

“I don’t know. These guys are pretty good. I don’t think throwing a rock is going to distract him for long.”

“We could send one of the TX-1138s in,” Ezersky offered from where he and Andy were hiding behind a modern art statue.

“The whats?”

“I was just holding one before Mr. Bartowski made me put it back.”

“The roborabbit?” Chuck asked. 

“Yes. That would take care of the problem rather admirably, assuming you don’t point a gun at me again.” Ezersky’s glare could slice through diamonds.

Another volley of shots echoed through the house, making Chuck and Bryce exchange a look. It appeared their shooter in the other room had started emptying his clip at random, trying to draw them out. “What exactly do you have against the TX-1138, anyway?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“What’s the TX-1138 do?” Bryce asked Ezersky.

“It carries a dart that incapacitates any it views as the enemy,” Ezersky said, like that was a perfectly normal thing to have in one’s house. When you were a crazy Russian toymaker with an attitude problem, Chuck figured, it probably was. “We can unleash it and let it deal with our friend in the other room.”

“Until he plays _Rabbit Hunt_ ,” Chuck said under his breath.

“Sounds good to me. Well…” Bryce trailed off with another flinch as they all looked up at the single bullet hole in the panel. “On second thought.”

Ezersky gave a long-suffering sigh similar to the ones Bryce had been giving Chuck the entire time and reached over, placing his hand flat against the wall a couple of feet to his right. Another panel slid open. The roborabbits were painted with blue stripes this time, but that wasn’t what immediately struck Chuck.

“Holy convenient wall panel, Batman.”

“Yeah,” Bryce said, his breath strained now. They cringed when the shooter in the other room let out another spate of gunfire. “No kidding.”

“Would you two silence your yapping for one moment while I work?” Ezersky said, rolling his eyes at the pair of them. Chuck and Bryce glared, but Ezersky merely shook his head and reached into the wall panel. A green light blinked on the roborabbit that he pulled free of the cabinet. Ezersky set it on the floor in front of him, pressing his thumb to the top, and turned it so that it was facing the room with the other shooter.

Chuck, Andy, and Bryce watched it wiggle in place for a second on its haunches. When it sprang, Chuck’s finger twitched on the trigger.

The guy in the other room had it worse, though. A few seconds after the roborabbit hopped out of sight with a _sproing_ , they heard, “What the?”

The puff-hiss of the TX-1138 dart firing would forever be embedded in Chuck’s memory, no matter how patchy the events of that night breaking into the Ezersky Manor were. Chuck closed his eyes.

“Ow! Son of a bitch!”

Ezersky’s shoulders began to shake. “Classic,” he said in a low voice, and Chuck realized that the Russian was _laughing_.

“You are a twisted, twisted man,” Chuck said.

In the other room, the puff-hiss sounded again. It was followed by the clap of a single gunshot.

Ezersky frowned.

“Guess your inventions aren’t exactly bullet-proof,” Chuck said.

“No matter.” The toymaker simply reached into the cabinet, repeated the process he had gone through with the first roborabbit, and sent a second combatant into battle.

The gunshot came faster this time. Ezersky’s frown deepened.

An idea hit Chuck. He glanced at Bryce, noting the beyond-unhealthy pallor, and called up a mental map of the place that was so clear, it almost felt like an intersect flash. “Send them all in,” he said. 

“What?” Ezersky reared up like an offended rooster, his wattles practically quivering. “I will not sacrifice—”

“Just do it. Give me half a minute. Bryce, keep an eye on these two.” Chuck started to slide for the room’s other door.

Bryce reached out with the hand on his uninjured side to grab the back of Chuck’s shirt. “No way,” he said. “I’m not letting you go in there alone.”

“I’ve got it,” Chuck said. “You stay put and bleed on the wall some more.”

“If you get killed, Sarah’s going to skin me alive, and then Casey will use me for target practice.”

“Then I’ll try not to get killed. Thirty seconds,” Chuck told Andy and Ezersky. Moving as silently as he could, he crept along the wall to the other door. The way the Ezersky Manor was laid out, there wasn’t really a way to get to the front door without the gunman getting a clear shot. But if the gunman was distracted, Chuck might be able to get inside while he was distracted and take him down. How, he had no idea. He’d come up with something.

This was, of course, on top of the fact that he would have to dodge any roborabbit poison darts while he was at it. He didn’t know what the blue stripes on the little creatures meant, but he hoped it wasn’t because the poison in them was derived from some super-deadly South American frog or something. That would suck.

His watch vibrated just as he reached the doorway. He slid around the corner before he activated the mic. “Sarah? Casey?”

“Where are you?” Sarah asked. “Are you okay?”

“We’re pinned down in the front room.”

“How many shooters?”

“Just one. I’m working on getting us past him right now.” Chuck crawled along a narrow hallway, done up in the mission style popular to Southern California. The open doorway to the other room with the gunman was about five feet ahead on his left. “You and Casey okay?”

“Lost, but we’re fine. This place is a labyrinth.”

“Lost Faulkner,” Casey said, sounding annoyed. “We’re heading back to you. Stay put.”

“Sure,” Chuck lied. “Hold please.”

Cautiously, he peeked around the corner. By his mental count, Ezersky and Andy should be releasing the rest of the roborabbits in about two seconds, which meant…

Right on cue, the first mechanized assault rabbit hopped into the room and was summarily dispatched. Chuck used the opportunity to study the room: the gunman was stationed at the back of the room, diagonal to Chuck’s current spot, where he had a clear vantage point of both doorways. Between him and Chuck lay two different places Chuck could hide, though it would be a stretch from the second spot to where the gunman was stationed. Behind the gunman was the hallway that led to the front door and to freedom. 

“Dammit,” Chuck said. Why did the guy have to be competent? It would be almost impossible to sneak up on him without the roborabbits. With the aid of tiny little jumping robots of death, it was only slightly suicidal, and he’d promised Bryce he would try not to get killed.

He was really hoping he wouldn’t have to break that promise today. Sarah had enough reasons to want to kill him. Dying would just make it worse.

“What the—” The gunman’s voice rang through the room, and then Chuck heard it: _sproing. Sproing. Sproing_. His army of tiny little robots had arrived. 

He shifted to a runner’s stance, not an easy thing to do with the stolen gun in his hand. When the volley of shots started, he let out a split-second prayer and went for it. Two steps and he was behind the recliner.

He heard the click of the gun slide, signifying an empty chamber. In the echo of the gunfire, the huff-piss of the darts shooting at the gunman from the miniature robots sounded oddly subdued. But the _sproing_ could be heard loud and clear as roborabbit after roborabbit took to the skies to take down their enemy.

Chuck almost felt bad for him. Almost.

He peeked around the edge of the recliner to see the man yanking a dart out of his arm. When the man reached for a spare clip, two more roborabbits sprang at him. He reloaded, aimed, and the carnage began anew.

Chuck used the opportunity to slide for home plate behind a divan where his hiding spot was no longer in the gunman’s line of sight. He crouched there, flinching with every new shot, and trying to psych himself up. The gunman faced away from him, nailing one roborabbit after the next with a sense of accuracy that made all of the saliva in Chuck’s mouth dry up.

 _Now or never, Bartowski_ , Casey’s voice told him.

Chuck sucked in a deep breath. When the gun went off again, he leapt to his feet, stumbling only a little. The guard turned another roborabbit into a skid-mark on the tile. Chuck circled around behind him, eyeing the two roborabbits left. They were motion-activated, so if the other man was astute, one of them switching its aim to Chuck could give him away.

He needn’t have worried. The minute he stepped behind the security guy, the other man took out the second and final roborabbit. Chuck had to suppress a wince for Ezersky—who had to be spitting mad—even as he raised the stolen gun to the back of the man’s head.

“Don’t move,” he said quietly.

The guard froze. “You’ve got some nerve.”

“Not really. Drop the gun.” A glance told Chuck that the guard had been hit a few times. He didn’t envy the guy the case of hallucinations and heat stroke he would have later, provided these weren’t the super-poisonous darts. “Do it. Now.”

“All right, all right.” The guard lowered his left hand away from his two-handed grip on the gun, and started to lower his right to put the gun on the ground.

“Slowly!” Chuck, who had seen Casey and Sarah do this too many times to count, took a step back, keeping his gun trained on the guard’s back. “Move slowly, now.”

“Fine.” The guard muttered something under his breath that probably wasn’t very complimentary to Chuck. The nerd hardly cared. Every muscle in his body was taut with the same tension that made his heart pound and kept his mouth dry. The last time he’d held somebody at gunpoint, he remembered, that somebody had attacked him, and then had ended up dead—almost by his hand—seconds later.

It wasn’t the time to think about Leader.

But maybe he should have thought about history repeating itself. Because the guard, gun almost lowered to the ground, jerked toward him suddenly. Chuck’s aim shifted automatically, instinctively following Casey’s lessons.

The guard never jumped at him. He got halfway through his turn—and promptly collapsed to the ground in a puddle of Italian suit and shoes. Chuck was left, his chest heaving, pointing at nothing but empty air.

“Chuck?” Sarah’s voice cut through his shock. He looked around, but she wans’t there. It took a few seconds for him to realize that Casey and Sarah had arrived, but they must be in the other room. “Chuck, are you okay?”

He looked up toward the room where the others were still hiding from the gunman. “Uh,” he said. “Yeah, I’m—it’s clear.”

Sarah immediately appeared in the doorway, Andy and Ezersky behind them. Sarah’s eyes went wide as they traveled from Chuck’s face to the body collapsed in front of him on the floor. “What—”

“Roborabbit juice,” Chuck said, lowering his gun when he realized he was flagging Sarah. “He took quite a few hits before he went down. Ouch. You guys okay? We’re all good here, except Bryce. He’s a little shot.”

“Casey’s seeing to him.” Sarah strode toward Chuck.

He immediately flinched away, putting an ugly waist-height statue between them. “Are you going to hit me again?”

“I considered it, but no.”

“Oh, okay.”

She twisted his ear instead. “What part of ‘Stay put’ was unclear?”

“Ow—ow, still attached to that, Sa—oof.” Would she ever hug him like a normal person, Chuck wondered, and not a heat-seeking missile? “No sign of Faulkner?”

“None, and the guards are all taken care of.” Sarah let him go. Now, she was scowling, obviously annoyed with anything and everything having to do with Faulkner and the Ezersky Manor. Unfortunately, the scowl only made the exhaustion on her face far more evident. “This place is a damned maze. What twisted genius designed it?”

“That,” Sergei Ezersky said, stepping forward and straightening his vest, “would be me. And who the hell are you?”

Chuck cleared his throat. “Ah, Sarah,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Sergei Ezersky. Ezersky, this is my girlfriend Sarah.”

Sarah looked between Chuck and the slightly testy Russian toymaker across from them, brow wrinkled. “Okay,” she said. “Now I’m confused.”

**4 FEBRUARY 2007**   
**EZERSKY MANOR**   
**16:12 PST**

Chuck stared at the front of Ezersky Manor, admiring the adobe brick and the rounded red shingles, but more focused on just how oddly _normal_ it looked. Of course, it had seemed ten times scarier with armed guards roaming the manicured lawns and a potential client—a client no more, as Andy Kohlmeier looked far too shaken by today’s events—held hostage inside its walls. Now it was simply a pretty-if-somewhat-ordinary mansion that held an entire secret floor, as well as scattered wall panels full of roborabbits that shot could-be-poisonous darts.

Simply, he thought. Heh. He really was a terribly big nerd because despite all of that, all of the drama that had gone down inside and the fact that they had let some kind of high-level Fulcrum agent get away, he really did think the whole idea of a secret vault and a secret floor was cool.

Sarah and Casey had called for government back-up and for an ambulance for Bryce. The latter had arrived first and the paramedic were inside with Bryce even now, trying to stop the blood flow, Chuck imagined. He’d worried about Bryce during the shoot-out, but the other man had made it seem okay.

When Sarah had gotten a good look at Bryce’s wound and had cursed roundly, Chuck figured it was less okay.

That was why he was staying out of the way, standing on the Ezersky Manor lawn. Andy sat on the front steps of the house nearby, still the color of wax and unwilling to talk to anybody. Chuck had no idea what the other man was thinking and truthfully hadn’t even tried to probe. The whole situation was a mess. Instead, he’d simply collected Becky the mini-computer from Sergei Ezersky’s security console and had taken himself off to the side, out of the way of any government crews that might be coming and any paramedic rushing to save Bryce’s life.

The front door opened, making Chuck and Sarah, a few feet away on her cell phone with Beckman and Graham, look over. Sergei Ezersky crossed the lawn to him. Sarah wandered away, probably wishing to keep her conversation private, though she stayed in sight. “I do not like having so many people in my house.”

“I don’t blame you,” Chuck said.

“I also don’t like it when visitors come to call and leave bullet holes in my walls and furniture. I like it even less when they destroy my property, Mr. Bartowski.”

Chuck hunched his shoulders inward a little, but straightened up quickly. “I didn’t shoot any of your roborabbits.”

“TX-1138s.”

“Okay, Lucas.”

A line creased the space between Ezersky’s eyebrows. “What?”

“You mean, you didn’t do that on pur—you know what, never mind.”

Ezersky went quiet for a minute and shook his head. It was a reaction Chuck knew well: people had been doing the same for his nerdy references for most of his life. He ignored it.

“I am not talking about today,” Ezersky said.

The temperature outside dropped a little. Chuck hoped Ezersky didn’t notice his instinctual twitch. “Uh, I’m sorry?”

“My house was broken into before, Mr. Bartowski. They stole nothing that I can discern, and there is no video surveillance from that night. In fact, they broke all of my cameras.”

He had? Chuck didn’t remember doing that.

“A bug in the system,” Ezersky went on, staring at the house rather than at Chuck. “It wiped out my camera system, so finely tuned. I only just now got around to updating the systems. They weren’t even online yet.” He sounded disgusted.

“Oh.” Well, that explained why the cameras had been turned off.

“But whoever visited me, they would have met my TX-1137s. A prototype yes. But effective. And their visit helped prove that the TX-1137s were ready to go—until they were destroyed.”

He and Sarah _had_ shot a lot of the roborabbits. Chuck almost felt guilty, but he remembered the terrifying way those things had hopped after him, never stopping, always advancing. “Why even build them? They don’t even have little robot hands. And why rabbits?”

“I find rabbits very soothing. What I don’t find soothing is people trying to break through my security.” Ezersky met and held Chuck’s gaze, now beyond disgusted. “I’ve no proof, Mr. Bartowski, but I know you broke into my house before. And when I prove it—and I will—you will get my bill.”

Chuck turned to look at the driveway, where several dark SUVs were now ambling along. When he turned back to the house, the front door opened to admit Bryce’s stretcher. “Honestly, Mr. Ezersky,” he said. “I think you’ve got bigger problems.”

“Like what, young man?”

“Like prison,” Chuck said, and walked away, toward the house. The paramedics weren’t sprinting for the ambulance, which told him that they had at least stabilized Bryce’s condition. The relief that spurted through him wasn’t enough to counter the sick feeling that had sat like a lump in his stomach since he’d first seen the blood on Bryce’s shirt. He waved to Sarah to let her know the paramedics had come out. She gave him a two-fingered salute.

He nearly sighed yet again. They still had a lot to talk about, and he wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.

He trailed the paramedics and stretcher to the ambulance. Bryce’s eyes were open and unfocused, pale against his even paler face, so that his hair seemed almost black.

“Is he going to be okay?” Chuck asked the paramedic.

The paramedic woman spared him a glance. “He’s stable. We’ll have to wait until they run some tests on him to know more.”

“Oh. Okay.” Chuck stood back, feeling a little helpless as Bryce was trundled into the ambulance by two paramedics, his head and arms flopping about in response to the jostling. As they were locking the stretcher into place, their radios crackled to life.

“Lynn, Mike, need one of you here. Code three!”

Whatever code three was, it sounded serious from the way the paramedics reacted. Chuck quickly stepped to the side as one of them—Mike—raced by him to help the other team. The other paramedic, Lynn, finished locking down the stretcher by herself, checking Bryce’s vitals and hooking him up to various things so that they could make the transport to the hospital.

Halfway through, she looked up. “You’re not Chuck, are you?”

“Uh, I am. Why?”

Lynn jerked her head at Bryce. “He’s asking for you.”

“Oh. Um, can I…” Chuck gestured at the ambulance.

“Sure, come on up. I need to check on something up front. I’ll give you two a minute.” Lynn climbed past the partition that led to the front seats, true to her word. Chuck climbed into the back of the ambulance, bumping his elbow against the side and cursing roundly. It was a small space inside, which should have comforted him, but instead he mostly felt awkward and helpless.

Bryce’s eyes were still unfocused when Chuck settled on the little bench next to him. Up close like this, he looked even worse.

“Hey, buddy,” Chuck said, gingerly touching him on the shoulder. “I’m here. You doing okay?”

“Chuck.” Bryce looked in his direction, but not directly at him. As an effect, it was appropriately spooky. Chuck had to remind himself that Lynn had said Bryce was stable, even if his friend did look two steps away from death. “Need to…need…to…”

“Need to what, Bryce? Whatever it is, I’ve got it. You should just rest.” Chuck forced a smile. “Plenty of pretty nurses where you’re going. Even Bryce Larkin needs energy for that charm of yours.”

“No.” Bryce shook his head, his skin the color of bleached bone underneath the gauze covering his head-wound. It made his hair stand up in funky shapes. “No, it’s not that. Need to…Chuck. Need to thank you.”

“Bryce, it’s okay. There’s no need to thank me. You would have done the same for me.”

It obviously took some effort, but the other man seemed to force himself to focus. His eyes cleared a little. “No,” he said. “Nobody is as good as you are, Chuck. Nobody else would have forgiven me. Thank you…for that.”

Had he truly forgiven Bryce for blowing up the Intersect compound and sending him the program? Chuck supposed he had, though the other spy had caused Sarah more nights of sleeplessness and pain than Chuck cared to think of. “Bryce, it’s okay,” he said again. “Don’t worry about it. You need to rest and relax or the paramedic is going to come after me.”

“Nobody is as good as you are,” Bryce said again. “You should hate me.”

“Bryce, I don’t hate you. Please, let it go. Relax.”

“I’d hate me,” Bryce went on, staring at the ceiling. “Anybody else would hate me. But Chuck…”

Chuck looked up at the front of the ambulance, where Lynn was on the radio with somebody, probably the dispatcher. She seemed reasonably distracted and Bryce obviously wasn’t going to rest until Chuck put his fears to rest. So he leaned close. “You had to send the Intersect somewhere. I get it, buddy. I do. National security was at stake. It’s all good. Just be easy, okay?”

But Bryce’s eyes focused again and he turned his head slightly, giving Chuck a queer look. “’M not talking about that.”

“You’re…not?” Chuck’s eyebrows went low over his eyes as he tried to puzzle out what Bryce could possibly be referencing.

“No. No, no, no.” Bryce shook his head, emphatic now. Whatever drugs they’d given him in the house, they must be pretty damned good. The other man seemed unfocused and unhinged in a way that Bryce Larkin would never allow himself to be. “Thank you for forgiving me about the bunker.”

Everything inside of Chuck stopped. He and Sarah had mentioned the bunker occasionally, as it was an embedded part of their history together (he more often than Sarah, but he understood that). To hear the word from Bryce’s mouth just seemed foreign.

“Nobody else would have forgiven me. Hell, I wouldn’t have forgiven me. But you did, Chuck. That’s why you’re a good person.”

“Bryce,” Chuck said, his voice even and slow, “if you’re talking about not visiting me more, it’s fine. You were busy. I understand.”

 _Please_ , his brain pleaded, _please let this be about guilt over not coming to see me more._ He didn’t think he could physically or mentally handle the alternative that Bryce might have had something to do with—no. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Bryce was his friend. Bryce would never have done anything to get him trapped in a bunker in the middle of Siberia for years.

Bryce was his _friend_.

“No,” Bryce said, and Chuck’s world plummeted. “Not talking about that. S’my fault. All of it. S’why I wanted you to know about Omaha. So you’d _know_ , and you do, and you forgave me. S’why you’re the best.”

And with that, he drifted off, either to sleep or unconsciousness as the drugs finally took their hold on him. Leaving Chuck alone in the ambulance with a paramedic named Lynn and the inescapably heavy knowledge that nothing in his world would ever be the same again.


	53. The Truth About Everything and Nobody

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. — _Ronald Reagan_

**4 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**EZERSKY MANOR**   
**16:38 PST**

He felt like an old man when he climbed out of the back of the ambulance, so that Mike and Lynn could drive Bryce Larkin off to the hospital, where he would be treated for a possible concussion and a gunshot wound to the side. The sun, though it was heading towards dusk, felt too bright; he squinted, half-raising a hand to fight off the glare.

They’d immediately woken Bryce up after he had fallen asleep so that the man existed in some sort of twilight haze. Chuck understood how that was. He was in a haze himself—mentally, at least. Physically, he felt old. No, ancient. His joints creaked and groaned with every movement. He was no longer nearly thirty but nearly three hundred, stuck with the guise of a much younger man but the soul of an elder.

Bryce Larkin had gotten him assigned to Bunker 77142135. Bryce Larkin had been the one to ensure that Chuck Bartowski would spend five years away from society, would flinch every time he faced open air and crowds. Bryce Larkin had ensured that Chuck Bartowski, never very average to begin with, would never feel normal again.

Bryce Larkin was supposed to be his friend.

Bryce Larkin had screwed him over for life.

Somehow, Chuck found his way to the front steps of the wide, wraparound front porch. Andy sat a few feet away, but he was doing a good job of ignoring everything that went on around them. Like Chuck, his world had been rocked hard today.

Like Chuck, he’d probably carry some scar of it with him forever.

Chuck sat down and stared at the lawns around him, but he saw nothing.

Bryce had gotten him stuck in the bunker.

Bryce had gotten him out of the bunker.

It had been Bryce all along.

“Chuck?” Sarah’s voice came from above him. Chuck turned his head, his eyes tracking until he found his girlfriend. He didn’t know what expression he had on his face, but it must not have been anything that would trip her off. She was standing on the front porch above him, nibbling on her lower lip. Something was up. “Casey and I are running a manhunt to find Faulkner.”

Chuck blinked and nearly asked who she was talking about before his brain kicked back in. Oh. Right. Piers Faulkner, the reason they were at Ezersky Manor at all.

“Beckman and Graham want us to lead the teams for that. We think you’ll be safer at home.”

Safer. Like in a bunker somewhere.

“Oh,” Chuck said.

“So we’ll have an agent escort you back and stay with you.”

“A bodyguard.”

“Right. But only until I can get there. I’ll be staying with you tonight.” Sarah bit her lip again, and Chuck broke through the old man haze enough to realize something might be up. “Do you think you could wait up for me? We need to talk.”

He didn’t know how much more he could take today. But the haze made him nod his head.

Something in the movement must have tipped Sarah off. Her entire expression changed from apprehensive to suspicious. “Chuck? Is something the matter?”

“I…” Chuck cast a helpless look over at where Andy sat in silence a few feet away.

Understanding, Sarah reached down and wrapped her hand around his elbow, pulling him to his feet. “C’mon, it’s a pretty day. Let’s take a walk. Get away from the madness for a little while.”

Chuck nodded again. His bones creaked as he walked beside Sarah. As a result, he limped a little in a way that made Sarah’s brows knit together in concern. She clutched his arm tighter until they were out of earshot of Andy and Sergei Ezersky, on a little path that led through a grove of palm trees. Some distant part of Chuck admired the geometric patterns the bark made as it crawled its way up to the palm fronds so many feet overhead.

“Chuck, talk to me,” Sarah said. “What’s going on? Is it about Bryce?”

A hollow, barking laugh emerged before Chuck could stop himself. “You could say that, yeah.”

“He’s going to be fine. The gunshot was a through and through, and according to them, it missed all of his major arteries. He’ll be in rehab a few weeks and—that’s not what’s bothering you.” Sarah turned Chuck to face her; he went without protesting, though he continued to stare at something far beyond her. He wasn’t sure _how_ he was feeling, except that it was deep and complicated. There was also the ineluctable knowledge that once this odd fog cleared from his brain, the world was going to look very different.

Inside the fog, though, it was safe. Safe and confusing.

“Chuck, what’s going on? You’re starting to scare me.”

“It was Bryce,” Chuck said.

“What?”

“It was Bryce.” He was repeating himself. “He wanted to talk to me and the paramedics were busy, and they were okay with it, so I got in the ambulance, and he _thanked_ me.”

Sarah looked wary now. “For what?”

“For being a good person. For forgiving him.”

“But you have, haven’t you? You haven’t said anything about what happened in September lately. I thought you’d just forgiven him.”

“It’s not about September.” It should have been amusing that their minds went to the same place first. A sign that they spent too much time together? Or just a sign that they were a couple able to finish each other’s sentences already? “About the bunker.”

“About the…oh.”

“For years,” Chuck said as though she hadn’t spoken at all, “for years, I thought I had been stationed there because I was some kind of spy-reject. A failure or a screw-up or something. But I never was, was I?”

“Chuck…”

But Chuck twisted away from her. The fog had begun to dissipate. “I busted my ass when Fleming told me about the opportunity to help my country. Here was the purpose I was looking for. Sure, I thought the Army was an odd fit…”

“Chuck.” Sarah stepped in front of him again, blocking his view of whatever it was he had been looking at. “What happened?”

“Bryce happened. He thanked me for forgiving him about getting me stuck in a bunker. That’s why he’s been giving me all of those cryptic clues about Project Omaha.” Chuck closed his eyes. He wanted to punch something. He also wanted to cry, though he’d never give in to the second option. He wasn’t a crier by nature. Neither was he really the type to punch anything, but it would have felt so good at the moment. He forced all of that back, deep down inside. “Couldn’t tell me about it himself, but he wanted forgiveness. Go figure.”

“Project Omaha,” Sarah said, horror in her voice. “The menu in Greece.”

“We were right about one thing: Bryce left it there for me to find. And he’s also the reason I am the way I am today. Lucky me, right?”

“Bryce got you stuck in the bunker,” Sarah said, sounding like she couldn’t believe it. She probably couldn’t, Chuck figured. He barely believed it himself, no matter how much damned sense it made. Bryce was his friend. Friends weren’t supposed to do things like this to each other. Friends were supposed to help protect each other.

“Maybe he had a reason,” he heard himself say. “But apparently, I’m not a screw-up.”

“I never thought you were,” Sarah said.

“Well, that’s one of us.”

Sarah hugged him, hard, and held on. “I’m sorry,” she said when he finally hugged her back. “I’m so sorry, Chuck. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

“How could you have?” Chuck closed his eyes again and held on. It hurt less.

“I’ll deal with this,” Sarah said. “I’ll talk to Graham and Beckman, get Bryce reassigned somewhere else. You won’t have to see him again.”

That wouldn’t cure anything, Chuck knew. But he just nodded his thanks and leaned against her, taking what comfort he could.

**4 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**19:02 PST**

“I’ll be fine,” Chuck told Sarah and Casey for the third time. He was sitting on the couch at the Bachelor Pad, watching Casey and Sarah deck themselves out for a manhunt. Faulkner had been spotted at Union Station, though he’d just as quickly vanished. It would be a long night of searching the rail-yard for the agents, it looked like. “I’m a big boy, guys. You can leave me by myself for one night.”

Casey turned to Sarah with a _See_? expression. Sarah, however, had a stubborn look in place. “I don’t think you should be alone. We can tell Beckman and Graham that you came along as tech support—”

“Leave the nerd, Walker,” Casey said, rolling his eyes as he pulled on a borrowed FBI Kevlar vest. “He’s not a fragile flower. He’ll be fine.”

“Now you’ve jinxed it,” Sarah said, scowling. She checked the clip on her backup Smith & Wesson. “Are you absolutely sure, Chuck? We’re working with the same team from Friday. They took a real liking to you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Chuck said for the fourth time. “I’m not even all that angry anymore. I’ll drown my sorrows in too many video games and stay inside the apartment, I promise.”

“That’s a double-jinx,” Sarah said sourly.

“And if you turn out to be right, Bartowski and I will let you tell us ‘I told you so.’ Now, c’mon, Walker. Say good-bye to your boyfriend. The team’s waiting outside.” He nodded at Chuck as he pulled on his leather jacket over his vest.

“Fine,” Sarah said, looking distinctly unhappy about the prospect. With Casey waiting at the door, she tucked the S&W away and crossed to Chuck. He gave her a peck on the cheek. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“I am your girlfriend. I expect to be said good-bye to properly.” Sarah wrapped her hand in his collar and gave him a much longer kiss. “There. That’s better. Last chance to—”

“No way. You’re doing this manhunt without me, Walker. Go on.” Chuck put his hands on her shoulders, turned her around, and push-walked her to the door and to Casey. “Happy hunting, you two. I’ll think fond thoughts of you as I’m killing Nazis or aliens or something. Bye.”

He shut the door behind them and waited until he heard their footsteps recede. In truth, he was probably better off going on their manhunt with them. They worked best as a team, something even the bosses acknowledged. But he was so, so tired of keeping it together, pretending to be normal for Casey and Sarah’s sakes. Sure, Sarah understood, but Chuck wanted a few hours to himself to really think. Bryce Larkin had gotten him stuck in a bunker for years. There had to be a reason for that, and the reason was buried firmly in the Phillip Dartmoor file that had sat on his computer desk all weekend, ignored by him.

It was time to stop ignoring it and face it.

Well, first, it was time to take a shower. He still had some of Bryce’s blood on him, and he had sweated pretty heavily—flop sweat and sweat from running around the Ezersky Manor. Chuck went upstairs to grab fresh clothing, deliberately not looking at the manila folder on his desk. In the shower, he let his numb brain remain empty.

Bryce had gotten him stuck in the bunker.

After the shower, he dressed and nuked himself some dinner, and took that upstairs with him. He turned on his computer to let Schnookie McSarahkins run around the kingdom of Athinei for awhile without him, stuffed his mouth full of Ramen. The folder sat in front of him, unopened.

“Come on,” he told himself. “Man up.”

But he didn’t move for the folder. Instead, he finished every bit of Ramen, slurping up the rest of the broth from the bowl. He went downstairs, took off his watch and washed his dishes, put them in the drying rack. He eyed the Playstation as he put his watch on. When he did so, he noticed that the face was still actively showing Sarah and Casey’s locations, now at Union Station. He needed to check something in the wiring he’d noticed while fixing things up at Madame Cotillard’s earlier.

No time like the present. So Chuck pulled out his watch-fixing kit, fixed the wiring problem with a little solder and ingenuity. He set the watch on the coffee table to cool where he would see it before he tried to leave the apartment again. Then he looked around for something to do.

It was only after he had spent ten minutes organizing the video game boxes in alphabetical order by genre that he finally acknowledged it was time to stop avoiding the problem. With a sigh, he rose to his feet and headed upstairs. The file folder hadn’t moved. He sat at his desk, turned off the monitor where Schnookie was doing a long and thorough inspection of the inside crook of her elbow, and finally opened the file folder.

It didn’t feel heavy, which surprised him. The first few pages were typical: government departments, some of the information redacted, personnel files for one Phillip Henry Dartmoor. This information, Chuck had looked over so many times that he had practically memorized it. So far, there was nothing new in Dartmoor’s file that Chuck didn’t know.

Chuck turned the page and his eyebrows shot up. “Okay,” he said aloud. “That’s new.”

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.

Phillip Dartmoor, Active Duty Marines, rated E-5, Staff Sergeant Stationed in the Afghanistan, Killed in Action, two months shy of his twenty-fifth birthday. The military profile Chuck had pulled up on him had given him all of that information. It hadn’t, however, mentioned that Phillip Dartmoor had been stationed at first Fort Bragg for two months, and at Lackland Air Force Base for six months, prior to the TDY on which he’d been killed.

Chuck turned the page.

PROJECT OMAHA, JOINT INTELLIGENCE. It bore the CIA’s logo, some detail lost due to the graininess of the photocopy Casey’s contact had procured, as well as a case file number. TOP SECRET/EYES ONLY was stamped across the entire page. No wonder it had taken Casey’s contact so long to get this information.

Chuck turned the page again. A list of mission objectives sprang up at him. He only needed to see the word “subliminal” and “mental data capacity” to know.

Holy frak. Project Omaha had been some branch of the Intersect project. Chuck read on: the participants in Project Omaha were young men and women, tested across the country for aptitude, subliminal data retention, military knowledge, fitness, and a number of other factors. Twenty-six candidates were pulled from all over the country, all of them below thirty and most of them active duty military.

A tingle ran up Chuck’s spine. Fleming’s CIA contact had had very specific orders for him: sign up for the Army. Get in shape, prepare to go through Basic Training and then Officer Candidate School. He would receive further orders upon graduation.

They had been grooming him for Project Omaha.

After the mission objectives began the pages and pages of testing on Phillip Dartmoor. His initial application for Special Duty, his aptitude levels, reports from his Physical Fitness Tests going all the way back to Basic. His subliminal data retention rate was high, almost as high as the rate Ellie had tested Chuck at a couple months before in Washington D.C. He’d scored straight A’s in the classes he’d taken on the military’s dime at a local college. His fitness was top notch.

He was the perfect candidate.

The testing numbers changed when Omaha began. Phillip Dartmoor remained the perfect test subject for the first few weeks, then medical reports of migraines and nosebleeds began to populate test results with terrifying frequency until Dartmoor was dismissed from the project and given a month’s leave. He was deployed five weeks later.

The page after that showed the autopsy results: two gunshots to the chest, another to the lower leg. A protest, and Dartmoor’s unit had been sent to suppress the riots. It seemed legitimate to Chuck, if terribly sad.

Following that, though, were the eyewitness reports, three from other soldiers in Dartmoor’s unit and one from a bystander. Each told about how a flash-bang grenade had gone off, startling the members of the unit. Dartmoor had gone absolutely still, his eyes rolling about in his head like he was having some sort of seizure. But the man hadn’t started seizing. Instead, he’d stopped moving altogether, then had turned and fired the entire magazine from his M16 into the crowd and at his fellow troops.

It had been his best friend—another man in his unit—who’d had to shoot him while he had been reloading.

The best friend had been honorably discharged from the Marines and according to the Omaha Project files, paid handsomely to keep quiet. The file didn’t say what had happened to the others.

Phillip Dartmoor was posthumously diagnosed with a form of schizophrenia that Chuck couldn’t pronounce.

Abruptly, Chuck pushed the file away from him, feeling sick. He was absolutely positive that Phillip Dartmoor had never suffered a day of schizophrenia in his life. Phillip Dartmoor had had some sort of Intersect.

And it had turned him into a monster.

How many other branches of these sorts of projects were there? Was he really the only Intersect running around? Chuck gripped the edge of his desk and forced himself to breathe, in and out, while he considered all of the possibilities. Graham and Beckman had made such a big deal out of the fact that he could contain the Intersect without any trouble and that he could be treated like a workhorse to assimilate and filter data. And if there had been other projects like Omaha, maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe there was something different about his brain and the Intersect.

Maybe he would go crazy and lose it after a bright flash like Phillip Dartmoor had.

Resolutely now, he turned on both monitors, minimized Schnookie, and opened up every computer safe-guarding app he had created over the past few months. It wasn’t quite a Faraday cage, but it would have to do. The last thing he wanted the bosses knowing was that he was looking deeper into the history of their precious Intersect project and stopping him before he could find out the salient details.

He flipped back in the file until he got to Omaha’s case number. Typing that into the search engine made a few warnings pop up; Chuck moved around each one with ease, rolling his eyes at the laxity of the government’s security. Finally, he pulled up the full report on Omaha, something he had been loath to do. No matter how careful he was now, Digital Dave’s team would find him.

The report started out the way the papers in Phillip Dartmoor’s file had. The names of the doctors and project lead were all redacted for their own privacy. But there was a list of participants and their statuses.

Chuck printed that out and pinned it to the former _Where’s Bryce Larkin_? board, now called Project What Now?

He found Phillip Dartmoor’s name on the list, tenth out of nineteen participants. Twelve of them had been KIA, three were in various psychiatric hospitals, and the final two were deceased due to unrelated medical conditions. Chuck checked on these. He didn’t personally consider a bullet to the head much of a “medical condition” so much as a “cover up for a conspiracy.”

Bryce had saved his life.

Bryce had put him in the bunker.

On the desk, his phone rang. Chuck walked over and hit the speakerphone button. “Hey, Dave. Took you awhile.”

“What are you _doing_ , Chuck?” Dave sounded panicked. “You’ve tripped three of my alarms in the past fifteen minutes alone. I’ve got people calling me, out of their minds panicking because there’s been some kind of terrorist attack.”

“No terrorist. Just me. It’s fine, Dave.”

Now, aggravation colored Dave’s voice. “If it’s fine, why didn’t you get clearance like a respectful person would have?”

“Would have taken too much time.” Chuck copied the entire file to an encrypted folder on his hard drive. “Okay, I’m out of there. You can kick me out of the system.”

“What the hell was so important you had to interrupt ‘Stargate’ night at the O’Connor house?” Keys clicked on Dave’s side of the phone line and not two seconds later, an “Illegal Unauthorized Login Attempt” window flashed on Chuck’s screen. He acknowledged it, cleaned his cache, and closed the browser window. “Is something going on?”

“I don’t know,” Chuck said truthfully. “Thanks for calling and not sending the men in black after me.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time I had knowingly committed treason for you or your girlfriend,” Dave said. “Please don’t use whatever information you just stole to blow up a building, plane, or person, okay? My reputation really can’t handle it, and killing is bad.”

“Can do. Thanks, Dave.”

“Night, Chuck.”

After he’d clicked “End” on his phone, Chuck walked over to the _Project What Now_? board and began tacking other things to the board about Phillip Dartmoor.

Why, he wasn’t sure. He studied the files, hoping some analyst had slipped and had forgotten to black-line a scientist’s name. None of it overlapped the timeline from the original Intersect project files Beckman had sent over, being created years later. He could find no connections, unsurprising since he couldn’t find any names beyond the P and O codenames from the original Intersect files.

Thinking really hard about it didn’t make him flash on Project Omaha again. He had only what he’d accessed during that first flash in Greece and then on his maybe-related flash upon arriving in Southern California. Though what Whiskey, Tango, and Foxtrot had to do with that, he didn’t know.

Nineteen participants. Twenty-six letters of the alphabet. It didn’t really fit all that well.

Frowning, he returned to Phillip Dartmoor’s file. That could have been him, Chuck thought. If Bryce hadn’t done… _something_.

So what had Bryce done? And how had he known about Project Omaha in the first place?

Chuck sent Dave a text message heads up and broke past the firewall again. The other man had to be tearing his hair out by now, but Chuck had to know. He’d buy them a cruise. Or a trip to Disneyworld as payment. Dave would grouse about it being hush money, but in the end, he’d back Chuck up.

Chuck’s own military file was easier to access than it should have been. He printed it out, closed the system, and tacked the information sheet next to Phillip Dartmoor’s.

Their scores were close. Dartmoor did better overall on fitness, but Chuck’s aptitude and data retention rates scored in the higher percentile. Chuck frowned. If he had done better in fitness, he would have surpassed Dartmoor completely. But his fitness scores at Basic were abysmal, barely passing and—

Wait, that wasn’t right.

Chuck’s frown deepened as he stepped away from the board and opened his closet. He rooted around on the top shelf until he found the box Ellie had brought over a couple of weeks before, a box that contained some of his memories from Stanford and the few things he had brought home from Basic. Ellie had kept it even when she had suspected he might be dead, and it was important to him, so it must be in there somewhere. He dug around until he found it: his Physical Fitness Excellence badge. Doing so well on the PFT had nearly killed him, so the badge was a mark of pride.

Defiantly, he pinned the badge next to his file.

“Guess I know how Bryce did it,” he said, rolling his eyes. Five years in a damned bunker all because of poor physical fitness, a hacked score.

He owed Bryce his life.

He had to remember that.

Bryce had gotten him stuck in a bunker. For five years.

He owed Bryce his life.

His phone chirped; a text message from Sarah. She was checking in, probably making sure he hadn’t lost his mind and really was drowning his sorrows in video games like he’d promised he would. Chuck gave the _Project What Now_? board a sardonic look before he texted back that he was just fine.

Angry, confused, a little terrified, and twice as determined as before to get the Intersect out of his head, but he was fine.

He wondered if Bryce was still stable at the hospital, if the tests had revealed that he’d survive. Would Chuck wake up tomorrow and feel differently about Bryce? The information about Project Omaha painted a stark picture, a snapshot in time that proved to Chuck one thing: nothing good could come from having the Intersect in his head. It hurt to flash sometimes. Would migraines and nosebleeds follow?

And as long as the thing in his head belonged to the government, so did he. And so did, he realized, Sarah. She wouldn’t leave until he left. Hell, even Casey had made noises that he’d stay as long as Chuck did, and Ellie and Devon were probably the same way.

Chuck had to get them all out of this. Somehow.

He made Dave’s blood pressure shoot through the roof again by breaking the security a third time and downloading a few more classified files. Eventually Dave was going to pass his activity up the chain and Chuck would receive a chewing out like nothing else from the bosses, but he hardly cared about that right now. All of these were dumped in his encrypted folder, backed up on a thumb drive, which went in his pocket and wouldn’t leave his person unless it was forced off of him. He also backed them up in an online drive and added extra security measures there. It was paranoid, but he didn’t care.

He got another text from Sarah, a report that they hadn’t found Faulkner anywhere in Union Station, though they’d gotten a hit on the GPS in his car a few miles away. They were en route to check that. Chuck made a joke about some video game he hadn’t played in a couple of years in reply, and received a smiley face in return.

It felt like lying not to call Sarah right away and let her know everything he’d found out. But she already knew the most important part, that Bryce had gotten him stuck in the bunker. The rest could wait until she got there later.

He read over files until his eyes began to ache. Then, and only then, he leaned back, stretching out his shoulders and lower back. The _Project What Now_? board was absolutely covered in pieces of paper that had been circled and marked with red sharpie so that it looked a little like Chuck had bled all over the board. Maybe he had. He shook his head at that absurd observation, grabbed his empty water glass, and headed downstairs to get a refill. It would be a long night before Sarah would get there and they could talk. Absently, he wondered if he should take some snacks out to the agent guarding the courtyard.

He forgot about all of that when he reached the bottom step of the circular staircase and blinked at his living room. “Andy? What are you doing here?”

Andy Kohlmeier, standing right in front of the computer desk in the living room, didn’t move or even acknowledge his presence. Chuck blinked a couple of times, wondering if eyestrain could really cause mirages, but Andy remained there, standing at parade rest. Not looking at Chuck.

Something began to crawl up Chuck’s back and his neck. Something was not right here. “Andy?” he asked again, stepping slowly into the living room. “What’s going on? Is something the matter?”

He took a step toward the other man, though every instinct screamed that something was wrong. And that was when he spotted the movement in the corner of his eye. He froze for a second and then slowly turned.

Standing in his kitchen, looking completely at home save for the gun in his hand, was Piers Faulkner. Chuck’s stomach turned inside out at the sight of the man. Andy continued to stare forward like some automaton, ignoring both of them completely.

“Delta,” Piers Faulkner said, stepping around the kitchen island and smiling at Chuck. “How nice of you to finally join us.”


	54. Coalescence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life is extremely complicated. — _Robert Ludlum_

**4 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**22:39 PST**

“Faulkner?” Chuck asked, blinking. The gun did not disappear, and neither did the crazy person in his kitchen. “Faulkner, what are you doing here? You should be fleeing the country right now. Look, if you put the gun down right now and there’s no trouble, I’ll even let you get away before I call my partners. Hell, I’ll give you a head start.”

Faulkner laughed. “It’s nice to know some things haven’t changed.”

Chuck knew having a gunman in your kitchen was a bad thing. Having a deranged gunman in your kitchen was much worse than that. And if that deranged gunman thought you were someone else…this entire situation was approaching _Star Wars Christmas Special_ levels of bad.

Even worse was the fact that Andy, standing by the door and looking blank, still hadn’t moved. The creepy-crawlies moving up and down Chuck’s skin only intensified. “Faulkner—”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not, nor have I ever been, Piers Faulkner.”

All in all, that was probably the least surprising thing about this whole situation. Chuck looked at Andy again. The other man continued to stare forward, emptier than the space between dancers at a junior high dance. And between Lifeless Andy and Chuck was his watch, still sitting on the coffee table where he’d put it for the solder to cool.

“I suppose,” Not-Faulkner said, inspecting the nails on his free hand idly, “that I should be insulted that you don’t remember me. But it’s flattering, on a different level. It means that your training finally took. I’m so pleased, Delta.”

“I’m sure. If your name’s not Faulkner,” Chuck said, “then who are you? And why did you call me Delta?”

“Because you signed away your name the minute you joined my program,” Not-Faulkner said. “I have many names. So do you.”

Chuck’s heart, already pounding, sped up more as Not-Faulkner took another step forward. Could he get to his watch in time? Would Not-Faulkner shoot him? Would the monologue keep going? “What are you talking about?” he asked, edging an inch close to his watch. It would take ages for Sarah and Casey to get there and save him, but it was better than nothing.

Wait a second. There had been an agent guarding the court yard. Instinctively, Chuck looked in that direction.

“Don’t worry about Agent Grey, Delta. Andy took care of her,” Not-Faulkner said, reading him easily. Chuck’s stomach bottomed out; the emotion must have shown on his face, for Not-Faulkner chuckled. “That hasn’t changed either, I see. But don’t worry, Delta. No need for too much collateral damage. She’ll have a mild headache only. And I see you haven’t rid yourself of your distaste with killing. Always your greatest failing.”

“Others might see it as a strength,” Chuck said, creeping closer to his watch.

“I never did. Stay put, Delta. I know precisely what you’re doing.” Not-Faulkner raised his gun. “No tricks. I’ve come to take you home, and I’d rather not use force. But I will, if I have to.”

“I am home,” Chuck said, straightening. The watch was not an option, he saw, and he didn’t even have any of Casey’s guns. He’d put the one taken from the guard at Ezersky Manor in Casey’s gun vault, and if he couldn’t edge toward a coffee table a mere two feet away, there was no way in hell he’d be able to trick Not-Faulkner into letting him get to Casey’s stash.

“Look,” he said, keeping any eye on both Andy, who hadn’t moved, and on Not-Faulkner. “I don’t know what either of you is smoking, and frankly, I’m not surprised you two were in on this together—well, actually, strike that, I’m surprised Andy was in on it. But I think you’ve got the wrong guy. My partners just ran out, they’ll be back any minute now, and I’d rather not let things get messy because that’s what will happen and… What are you doing?”

“I highly doubt that your partners are anywhere near here,” Not-Faulkner said, holding up a phone. Chuck saw a navigation app with two blue dots on the screen, and his throat went dry. “They’re still chasing the tracker I planted to keep them occupied. It’ll be awhile.”

“What do you want, then?” Chuck asked. “Besides to talk my ear off?”

“And that hasn’t changed either, I see,” Not-Faulkner said. “I want you to come with me, quietly, Delta. It’s time to go home.”

“Quit calling me that.”

“What should I call you, then? You’ve got many names, isn’t that right? Chuck Bartowski, computer nerd from California. Charles Carmichael.”

Chuck felt the world go still. Carmichael was a code name, a ghost, that wasn’t supposed to be breached. The fact that Not-Faulkner knew…Chuck’s cover was blown.

“Stargazer,” Not-Faulkner said, his eyes never leaving Chuck’s, and Chuck’s heart hammered harder. “Prometheus. ICE Agent Sean Fitzgerald. Peter Rogers. Jackson Georges. And,” Not-Faulkner said, “finally and most importantly, you’re Delta. Which is the only name you have ever needed or will ever need. I myself have just as many names, but you know me best as Carver.”

“C-Carver.” The wind was knocked from Chuck’s lungs in one frightening, intense whoosh. It was a name he thought occasionally, never when he was concentrating. He’d seen the name Carver on his computer screen for three ye—no, five years—stuck in that godforsaken bunker in No Man’s Land. Carver, who was often the only connection he had to the world at large, and had been the only connection total until Bryce and Sarah had dropped into his life.

Chuck had never wondered what the man looked like. Was that strange? It felt like it should be strange, now that the man himself—Carver, Carver—stood in front of him with a gun.

“I thought you’d be taller,” Chuck heard himself say, which wasn’t true. But his mouth and his brain suddenly seemed to be acting independently of each other. “And I expected you to have a mustache, too.”

Carver stared.

“Like a real mustache, you know?” Chuck went on. He distantly recognized the note at the edges of his voice as panic, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He was now beyond certain of two things: he knew nothing about anything at all, and things were about to get very, very bad. But he couldn’t stop himself, so his mouth kept moving and the words kept tumbling. “A handlebar mustache, at least. But I guess you’d need a monocle and a penny-farthing for that. And a bowler. No handlebar mustache is complete…without…a bowler.” Perhaps his brain finally caught up with how ridiculous he sounded, for his mouth stopped working, almost on its own volition.

The skin around Carver’s mouth firmed, shifting into something uglier. “I’ve had enough of this, Delta,” he said. He looked over at Andy, still standing lifelessly by the door. “Foxtrot.”

Andy snapped to attention with military precision.

Every hair on Chuck’s body stood on end.

“Foxtrot,” Carver said, “the movie on the second floor is ‘Autumn Sonata.’”

Chuck’s eyelids fluttered at the oncoming flash even as across the room, Andy began to blur into motion. Time slowed down; images flitted through Chuck’s brain even as he watched Andy shift like some absurd puppet caught in Jell-O.

An osprey going in for the kill in living, breathing Technicolor.

LINCOLN PROJECT, FORMERLY KNOWN AS OPERATION MARDUK.

A spyglass.

PROJECT RELOCATED TO WARSAW, POLAND.

The osprey, catching the fish. The fish, too heavy, overpowering the osprey and dragging it into the water.

Andy coming toward Chuck, his eyes completely blank, his face twisted into a grimace.

CODE PHRASE: FOXTROT, OFFENSIVE, HAND TO HAND. DISABLE OPPONENT. The movie on the second floor is Autumn Sonata. Emphasis: second, Sonata. Accent: Austrian.

The fish and the osprey, the fish winning, dragging the osprey into the water.

“What the—” was all Chuck had time to say before Andy struck.

Andy had crossed the room in a long, single lunge. In the same move, he brought his right fist up and around. Chuck saw the punch coming, but thanks to the flash and his own shock, could do nothing to stop it. It slammed into his forehead and for a split-second, the entire world turned orange and pink.

He staggered back, hard. His head split in two, or it felt like it, but he still flailed out, fingers grabbing something soft—the arm of the couch. Instinct had him scrambling away, his legs kicking so that his bare feet scrabbled against the floor. He lurched.

Andy simply side-stepped, wrapped an arm across Chuck’s shoulders like they were buddies, and forced Chuck to fold at the waist. He twisted and drove his knee into Chuck’s chest. And while Chuck’s chest exploded and he cried out, Andy shoved him forward.

Chuck stumbled forward toward the TV and the desk. Unfortunately, the coffee table was already there, so he slammed his left knee down hard enough to hear it crack. The ground rushed at him. He landed in a clatter of video game controllers and Casey’s gun cleaning kit, on his side, with no way to escape.

“What the—what the _he_ —”

The words came out as a gasp even as Andy, eyes never leaving Chuck’s face, moved around the coffee table. Chuck scrabbled for something, anything, trying to get away. But Andy advanced on him just like the Terminators from his worst nightmares, that normally-genial face clean of all emotion.

Chuck tried to push himself up, but he’d fallen awkwardly. His hand slipped on a video game box and lost all purchase. He slipped and went down hard. To make matters worse, he pushed up again and Andy was suddenly there, standing over him.

Chuck saw the foot coming and reacted on instinct, kicking out. It was a lucky hit, he’d be sure of that later, but it was a hit nonetheless. His foot connected with Andy’s knee.

Chuck screamed. That was his bad leg. It barely stopped Andy for more than a second, but that second was all Chuck needed. Gritting his teeth, panic making him sweat and want to cry and want to scream, he twisted about—and managed to kick Andy solidly in the groin.

It would have dropped a regular man into the fetal position with a sob. It slowed Andy down for about twelve seconds.

In those twelve seconds, Chuck forgot all about how his apartment was laid out, about all of the egress points he’d memorized every time he walked into any of the room. He was trapped, stuck between his coffee table and the TV. There was a door around here somewhere, and a staircase, but for the life of him, he couldn’t have told anybody where. All he knew was that Andy was coming and thanks to Project Lincoln, whatever the hell that was, he wasn’t going to stop. So he pushed past the confusion and, gasping as the pain made his eyes water, finally shoved himself to his feet. He took off running, not caring which direction, just that he needed to _get away_.

He got a step before his knee buckled and he felt something wrap around his shoulder. Andy grabbed his right shoulder with a vise-like grip, his fingers digging in hard. Chuck didn’t have time to throw an arm up to protect himself. Andy swept his right arm across Chuck, almost like he was going in for another hug. The inside of his forearm, though, was far more deadly than that: it caught Chuck right on the chin, sending sparks dancing across the edges of Chuck’s vision. He hit the ground once more, groaning. It sent all of the air rushing out of his lungs again.

Some instinct Chuck didn’t even know he had made him raise his arms. Andy’s kick glanced off his elbow, making Chuck cry out in pain.

It beat breaking his ribs, but damn, it hurt. What the hell was going on? Why was this happening to him? Where was Sarah?

The second kick caught him a little higher on the forearm. Chuck whimpered and, when Andy drew his foot back to deliver another punishing blow, threw himself forward. He hugged Andy’s leg like some toddler greeting his father coming home from work. And, his eyes streaming, he twisted hard.

Andy’s mass crashed into the floor hard enough to rattle the TV. Chuck didn’t wait around to see if the flatscreen would fall or not. Even though it was like driving a knife right into the meat of his own leg, Chuck lurched to his feet and ran. It was a stupid move befitting any horror movie, but he didn’t see any other way out: he raced for the stairs, which was the only route not blocked by an insane person or a Terminator.

“My sweet pet parrot,” Carver said, and Chuck immediately stopped, nearly tipping forward into the spiral staircase.

He was suddenly frozen, completely unable to move in a way that should have indicated some kind of paralysis poison from a comic book. Panic tasted like something real in his mouth. His thoughts raced faster than a million miles per hour, but his body never moved. In his mind, Chuck entertained one absurdly familiar and frightening real vision of pounding his fists against cage bars, of screaming until his throat was hoarse.

Behind him, he heard Carver take a step closer. Chuck felt fear sweat cascade. “My sweet pet parrot,” Carver said a second time, “has flown the coop.”

Chuck’s world went completely black.

**4 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**THE BACHELOR PAD**   
**23:16 PST**

An American flag.

PROJECT LINCOLN—

Chuck blinked awake, mid-flash, though his eyes had never closed—

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS: RICHARD G. CARVER. WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN.

A mime, playing with an invisible yo-yo. The hand bobbing up and down, up and down.

ASST DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS: GAIL HOLLOWAY, DECEASED, 17 JAN 05.

The American flag flapped over the black and white footage of the mime. Chuck watched it all, paralyzed by the flash, neither awake nor asleep. He was sitting up.

ASSOCIATES: ROBERT WOLF, PHD, NEUROBIOLOGY, DECEASED, 21 MAR 05.

JENNIFER SAMPLE, PHD IN PSYCHOLOGY, DECEASED, 21 MAR 05.

JOSEPH HANKS, TEMPORARY WORKER, DECEASED, 07 FEB 05.

Chuck blinked, but the flash didn’t stop. What was he seeing? Where was he? Why had he flashed?

What was going on?

The mime dropped his yo-yo.

PROJECT DISCONTINUED 1 JAN 05.

PERSONNEL RELOCATED UNDER ORDER OF GRAHAM, LANGSTON. CLASSIFIED: ECHELON LEVEL ALPHA.

The mime picked the yo-yo up and made a show of walking the dog again.

The American flag waved one final time.

Chuck blinked yet again and this time, his vision returned. The flash couldn’t have taken more than a split-second—they never took very long—but he’d never been woken by a flash before. He’d also never fallen asleep at the desk in the living room, which was evidently where he was now, judging by what he could see directly in front of him. The computer monitor currently scrolling what looked like government secrets about a Project Lincoln certainly wasn’t the monitor up in his room.

Other details leaked in. He was sitting straight up, erect in a military posture, his feet aligned with his shoulders on the floor, his elbows tucked to his side, his head held erect.

Carver was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder.

What the hell was going on? Why didn’t he remember anything? Chuck almost turned his head to ask what was happening, but out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Andy Kohlmeier standing at slack-faced attention.

It came rushing back in one terrifying flood. The pain followed close behind. It felt like a truck had run over his leg, making Chuck suck in a quick breath. And his head felt like Sarah had used it instead of Frank for kickboxing practice. Somehow, he managed to keep from screaming. He didn’t know how. Tremors moved up his legs and his chest, but Chuck kept himself absolutely erect.

His only saving grace, he knew, was that Carver didn’t know he was aware. _Why_ he was aware, Chuck didn’t know that either, but the longer he could keep Carver from realizing he was awake, the longer it would be before Carver unleashed Andy on him like some kind of—

Manchurian candidate.

The words hit Chuck and made the trembling increase. It was moving up his arms now, though he kept his hands rigid on the keyboard. He’d seen The Manchurian Candidate, of course he had. He still had his nerd card, didn’t he? He liked the Frank Sinatra movie version more than the Denzel Washington remake years later, though the concept had, at the time, seemed rather indicative of Cold War paranoia. Soldiers, trained to rigid obedience. A single phrase, a deck of cards, a picture, a word. Mind control, the stuff of science fiction both classic and new. Zombies and Reavers and other creatures, all ordered around by a single thought.

Chuck wasn’t thinking about the Cold War now. It was real. All of it was real in a way that terrified him because it had nearly beaten the ever loving daylights out of him in his own living room, all because of a simple—

Everything inside Chuck stopped as though somebody had slammed on the breaks.

A simple phrase.

The last thing he remembered before the flash, before the American flag and the mime and a list of dead scientists, was Carver saying something… Something about what? Chuck thought hard, even while he kept his body rigidly still. It had been something about a pirate? No. Something about a parrot.

And it shouldn’t have meant anything, just nonsense words. Unfortunately, Chuck realized as dread slicked down his esophagus to sit in his stomach like a sick ball of poison, it meant everything.

Andy wasn’t the only Manchurian Candidate in the room.

Somehow or other, though he had no idea how, Chuck had been turned into something that could be controlled. He had no memory of it, no idea how it could have happened, but he knew with more certainty in that moment than he’d ever felt before: he had been part of Project Lincoln. He had been turned into a Manchurian Candidate.

It was only by some divine act that he heard Carver, still standing just behind his shoulder, draw breath, a sign that the other man was about to speak. It kept Chuck from starting like a frightened rabbit and giving away that he’d somehow shaken off whatever stupor the Project Lincoln programming had done to him. Why he had shaken it, Chuck had no idea.

“Delete that,” Carver said, and Chuck realized the mad scientist was talking about the file on Chuck’s screen. Quickly, he focused his eyes back to the project, though his heart was pounding, and it couldn’t be real. The screen showed a file about Project Lincoln, Chuck realized. Seeing it didn’t make things any more or less surreal, but it did confirm one thing: Project Lincoln existed. It was on paper somewhere.

And Carver was telling him to delete the evidence of that. A quick glance at the log in the bottom right-hand of the monitor told him that it wasn’t the first file Carver had had Chuck delete.

He wanted to shake and cower or possibly curl into a fetal position on the floor, but something in the back of his mind coldly kept him upright. He’d seen the look on Andy’s face, or the lack of one. If Carver ordered Chuck dead, Andy wouldn’t stop until Chuck was on the floor with a bullet between his eyes. Right now, the best way out was to play along. So Chuck mentally cursed himself and deleted the file on the Lincoln Project. He sat, staring at the computer screen and hoping that Carver wouldn’t notice that his hands had begun to shake in earnest.

He forced them to still. It took every bit of willpower that he had. Sweat began to drip down the back of his neck. It felt cold.

“Open the next one,” Carver said.

Chuck clicked on the next file on the list that had popped up on his computer screen. It appeared Carver was cleaning house, as that file had to do with the Lincoln Project as well.

The flash actually didn’t surprise him this time.

Grainy video footage of doors opening on what appeared to be Black Friday.

A list of names. ALPHA, DELTA, FOXTROT, KILO, SIERRA, TANGO, WHISKEY.

Following that, a list of phrases, all seemingly innocuous, phrases that could have passed for everyday, pleasant conversation.

HAVE THE CATS ALL BEEN GATHERED UP, MARGARET?

THE PENGUINS SWIM AT DAWN.

I THINK I’LL GO TO THE FAIR THIS MAY.

REWIND THAT TO THE FOURTH FRAME AND STOP, PLEASE.

The phrases were hand-written snippets on yellow legal paper, with little accents over some words that Chuck didn’t understand. They all had orders attached, sometimes underlined and sometimes circled.

CALM. SEDATE. ATTACK. OFFENSIVE, DEFENSIVE.

KILL.

The shoppers broke past the doors and spilled onto the sales floor, causing sheer pandemonium and ending the flash.

Oh, God, Chuck thought. Oh, God, oh, God. He was a sleeper assassin. He’d just flashed on all of the phrases that controlled him.

And there were more of them. Whiskey, Tango, and Foxtrot hadn’t been Project Omaha participants at all. They had never been super-soldiers like the ones Project Omaha had been trying and failing to produce for the US Military. No, Project Lincoln participants were all some kind of rejects from a bad science fiction movie—a bad science fiction that had become his life.

Oh, God.

“Delete,” Carver said, and Chuck deleted the file. He moved automatically to open the next file on the list, but stopped himself just in time. He was Carver’s puppet. He had to play along. Andy stood in the corner of his vision, a constant reminder just like the throbbing pain in his leg. If he wanted to keep up the charade and avoid more pain, Chuck had to keep up the act.

His eyes fell on a picture Sarah had given him, one he’d badgered Casey into letting him put on the computer desk. In the frame, Chuck was hard at work on some invention or other, his head bent low. Sarah had given him a surprise hug and was smirking over his bent head at the camera. She had joked at the time she’d given it to him that it perfectly summed up their relationship. It should have been reassuring to Chuck now. Sarah would come save him, Sarah and Casey would get him out of this. They would come in and take Carver out, and end this nightmare.

Until, Chuck realized, the sick ball in his stomach making him want to retch all over the computer desk in front of him, Carver used just the right phrase on Andy, or worse, Chuck. And then it would be over. They might take Andy down, but would they shoot Chuck if Chuck was coming at them like Andy, ready to kill them? Chuck hoped they would. He really, really didn’t want to kill his girlfriend or his partner.

He had to get away from Carver. He had to do _something_ before Casey and Sarah came back and walked into a trap neither of them knew about.

“Open the next file, Delta,” Carver said. When Chuck obediently did so, he leaned in close over Chuck’s shoulder to get a closer look.

It was the best opportunity Chuck had had, so he let months of Casey’s various trainings take over. He didn’t bother to send up a prayer to whatever deity that might be watching. The gods had forgotten about him. So instead he twisted in his seat and drove his elbow up, hard, right into Carver’s throat.

Carver stumbled back, his hands going to his throat. Chuck got one glimpse of too-wide blue eyes as he surged to his feet and ran for it.

The minute Carver could speak, he’d send Andy after Chuck, and the throat jab had brought him only precious seconds. So Chuck ran. Andy was between him and the front door, he ran for the stairs. He had a balcony. He could jump down to the next floor from there. And if he broke his neck in the process, so be it.

At least he wouldn’t be used as a weapon against Sarah and Casey.

He took the stairs two at a time, whimpering every time his bad leg touched down. From the first floor, he heard Carver gasp out something. Chuck clapped his own hands over his ears. He couldn’t be used if he couldn’t hear the phrase.

Going into his room had been monumentally stupid. He lost precious seconds again by scrabbling in a panic at the sliding glass door onto his balcony. Adrenaline and fear and terror and pain flooded through his system, robbing him of all motor control. Somehow, he got the door open, though he had no idea how. He nearly threw himself head-first off of the balcony in his haste to get outside.

Andy hadn’t come up yet.

Maybe he could get away. Could he get away? Could he make that leap? Chuck leaned over the balcony, trying to get a good look and figure out the angle, even while his brain kept up a constant chatter of _Escape! Escape! Run for it_!

He was about to pop over the railing and make the jump when two things happened: he spotted the red button off to the side of the railing. And he heard Carver tell Andy to attack.

Without knowing what he was doing, Chuck slammed his hand down on to the red button.

An honest-to-God harpoon shot off from his left, aiming straight for a tree about two hundred feet away. Chuck watched it go, his eyes wide.

“Holy mother of—she really wasn’t kidding about the zip line,” he breathed. Reality reinserted itself past his shock: he was stuck on a balcony with a Terminator sleeper assassin coming to kill him. Now would be a very good time to use the zip line.

But there wasn’t, he saw, a handle anywhere. What the hell? What could he—an idea struck him, and he fumbled for his belt. His hands refused to cooperate.

He heard Andy on the stairs behind him, footsteps pounding like the toll of a countdown clock. He needed something, anything that could be a handle, something that wouldn’t drop him to his death—

He tripped over his jeans that he’d tossed on the floor before. Sheer instinct and panic had him reaching down and yanking so hard on the belt that he heard the pants rip. He’d care about that later. In a flash, he was across the room, the belt wrapped around the zip line.

 _Please don’t let me die_ , he thought to nobody in particular, and launched himself into the night.

He hit open air and his stomach leapt to his throat. There was a tug on the back of his shirt as he launched, but beyond that there, was nothing, nothing but the empty air and the feeling of plummeting to his death.

Or at least Chuck assumed that was what it was. That was what it felt like, at any rate. He sped along the zip line, the belt striping his fingers with red and white and pain. The ground and the tree rushed at him fast—too fast. He was going to crash.

Chuck nearly squeezed his eyes shut and gave in right then, as his bowels were already halfway to water. Some forgotten force of will inside him made him keep staring forward. And listening to some instinct he didn’t even know he had, he let go of the belt. For a second, he was airborne, flying feet-first through the air like something out of one of Morgan’s beloved Kung Fu movies.

There was one brief flash of memory, of flying through the air in the disgusting, grimy lobby at the Heartbrake Hotel, aiming for that scuzzy carpet. He hit the ground feet-first and his knee gave out from under him. He stumbled forward and landed on his face. It occurred to him that he wasn’t wearing shoes.

“This night really, really cannot get worse,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder.

Andy hadn’t bothered to find a belt. He was climbing down the rope, hand over hand, like some kind of demented spider monkey.

“Oh, right. Shut up, Chuck,” Chuck said, and took off running into the park behind his apartment complex. He ran the paths most every morning with Sarah—save lately, as she’d vanished off the face of the earth to think—but that was very different than right now. It was abandoned due to the late hour, for one thing, and he was normally wearing shoes. He also regularly didn’t have some kind of brain-washed assassin chasing him.

There was a bit of a forest, a pathetic copse where teens went to make out more than anything else. Chuck sprinted through it now as fast as his abused feet and his leg would let him. He needed to evade Andy long enough to form some sort of escape plan, made difficult because Andy wouldn’t stop until he found Chuck. He would just keep going in single-minded fervor, which meant that Chuck needed to be clever.

Chuck had never felt less clever in his life. His entire world seemed to be a repeated chant about the need to get away, which didn’t help at all. Maybe he could find some place to hide, at least until Andy went past? Then he could take off running in the opposite direction and get away? Chuck looked around, but the patch of forest provided little cover.

Andy would be a lot faster on foot than Chuck once he made it down the rope. He had the benefit of shoes and the apparent inability to feel pain.

But maybe he would think that Chuck would just keep running, which was the logical response in this sort of situation. Chuck’s instincts were screaming at him to do just that. Maybe that meant Andy’s instincts would do the same. And maybe Chuck could help him along.

When he spotted the empty Coors bottle on the path ahead of him, he didn’t stop. He merely bent, scooped it up mid-run, and flung it at as hard as he could in the other direction. Maybe it would distract Andy.

Chuck repeated the grab, scooping up a fist-sized rock this time. The patch of woods ended and he ran across rubber shavings toward a playground that looked vaguely like some kind of castle. He could really use the real Castle right now, but this would have to do. He dove into one of those short crawl-tunnels kids loved to get stuck in, and curled as tight as the limited space would let him.

As far as plans went, this one _sucked_. He knew that. But it was all he had. His feet were throbbing and wet with what he hoped was dew even though he knew better. His arm and knee hurt so badly that it made rational thought hard to come by, just when he knew he needed it most.

He wanted Casey and Sarah to come save him. He wanted them to stay far away.

His breath rasped in and out, amplified by the acoustics in the tunnel. Every time he tried to breathe quieter, panic made the very air inside his chest shudder so that he gasped. It was like somebody turned the volume up on nature: he could hear the thrum of the cars passing by on the highway, the chirp of insects, far-off noises of humanity. His heart beat a bass to all of the cacophony, and he could practically hear his bones clicking together as he shook.

There was not a single sound from the super-soldier/brainwashed assassin out to beat him to a pulp.

Had he gotten away? Had Andy bought the ruse? Chuck’s fingers quivered as they clutched the rock to his chest. It was all he had.

Maybe he’d pulled it off, after all. There wasn’t the thunder of footsteps outside the tunnel and with Chuck’s senses as hypersensitive as they were, surely he would hear Andy coming, or at least some warning—

Something grabbed his ankle and yanked.


	55. Ignition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. — _Mohandas Gandhi_

**4 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**SAN LEANDRO MEMORIAL PARK**   
**23:25 PST**

Chuck never stood a chance. The minute something grabbed his ankle, he was hauled from the tunnel. He let out a shout and threw up his arms up to protect himself.

It turned out to be a good move. Andy let go of his leg and tried to drive a fist right into Chuck’s stomach; by sheer dumb luck, Chuck lashed out, knocking Andy’s fist away. His other hand, the one clutching the rock, swung up on its own accord toward Andy’s temple.

Andy blocked him, grabbing Chuck’s elbow. If there had been murder or at least anger in his eyes, Chuck might have handled it better. But Andy’s eyes were completely blank of _everything_. Chuck struggled hard against Andy’s grip on his elbow, but the other man had a grasp like a gold digger clutching a diamond ring. Chuck heard himself actually whimper as his entire body bucked, trying to get away. He reached out blindly with his free arm, grabbed a handful of cloth, and yanked.

Andy, caught off balance, went forward. There was a loud crack when Andy’s forehead met the top of the tunnel. His head snapped back, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second. It was all Chuck needed. He kicked out, knocked Andy’s feet out from under him, and scrambled backwards through the tunnel. By the time he reached the other side, Chuck had managed to right himself. He stumbled to a sprint and ran. It was the panicked flight of prey, but that was what he had become.

He didn’t even have a weapon anymore. He’d dropped the rock. His hands were shaking too badly.

It took him a few steps to notice that something was different. He could hear Andy behind him, getting to his feet. But every other time he’d been scared before—and there were plenty of those times throughout the life of Operation Prometheus, far more than the bosses and his partners would prefer—every other time, the world had blurred and shifted so that only select details broke through the haze of his own perception. He could remember some details vividly, while entire spans of time were fuzzy in his brain.

But right now, it wasn’t like that. Right now, he noticed everything. Right now, he could see every finite detail in the trees as he ran past, the way the leaves twitched and rustled against each other. Other details were murky because it was dark and the park didn’t have the best lighting, but his sense of hearing wasn’t hampered by the dark. He could hear the way his feet hit against the grass. He felt the cold of the February chill against his skin, and the soul-searing agony every time his left leg touched down, aggravating what was probably his enflamed knee.

He could feel in minute, precise detail just how fast his heart was racing.

And he heard, or maybe he sensed, the sound of Andy behind him, coming up. It was like experiencing the world in high definition when he’d been stuck with standard for years.

He didn’t know what it was, but his throbbing knee aside, it was kind of awesome. Or it would have been awesome, if he weren’t on the run for his life from an empty-eyed madman.

Chuck didn’t have a hope of outrunning Andy, not when the other man had that single-minded resolve and shoes on his side. There wasn’t any chance of winning in a fight, either. He was already envisioning the many ways Andy was going to hurt him, and the sheer, unending amount of pain, as Andy’s footsteps gained on him.

His imagination seemed to still be stuck in standard definition. If he survived, he’d be grateful for that fact later.

The second Andy was right on his tail, though, Chuck did something unexpected: he waited for Andy to make the grab, and stopping abruptly, threw his upper body forward. Andy went flying like one of Spider-man’s foes. Chuck, thrown off-balance by the sudden shift in weight, fell to his knees.

He watched with a sort of sick, detached horror as Andy’s body flipped over like some kind of deranged toy. He hit a tree trunk with a hard thump.

Andy, or Foxtrot, or whoever he was, lay on the ground for a second, obviously stunned.

Maybe he’d done it, Chuck thought. Maybe he’d—

Andy climbed to his feet. The movements were as mechanical as everything else he’d done since coming into Chuck’s apartment, but they were slower now. Clearly, he was injured, even if his mind didn’t acknowledge the pain. But when he came out of the trance or whatever it was holding onto his mind, turning him into a robot, he was going to be in for an ugly surprise.

Assuming this was actually a trance and not just Andy’s core personality. No, Foxtrot’s core personality. Andy Kohlmeier had never existed. Or had he?

Chuck took a step back, warily. He’d broken the Project Lincoln trance. It was possible that Andy or Foxtrot could do the same thing, right? Right? The other man wouldn’t stop chasing him in this Lincoln trance, possibly until and even after he was dead. And if he chased Chuck into public, would he stop because there were bystanders around?

“Andy,” Chuck said, his voice hoarse. “Andy, c’mon, this isn’t you. Stop this. Don’t do this.”

Andy finished climbing to his feet. His head moved about, his eyes tracking until they landed on Chuck.

They didn’t change. Andy moved forward. He was definitely walking slower, but his steps were as sure as ever.

Chuck nearly wet himself. “Andy,” he said again. His voice was a little stronger, which was good because all he could hear inside his head was _Run, moron_! ”Andy, you’ve got to be in there somewhere. Don’t do this, you don’t want to hurt me. This isn’t you. You’re not a killer.”

Though, Andy might have been. Chuck had no idea. He didn’t even know the guy’s real name, after all.

“Please,” he said, holding his hands up in entreaty. “Don’t listen to Carver. You can shake this, we can take him down together, we can make this right—”

He saw something in Andy shift—not emotionally, but physically—the other man’s hips moving and his arms coming up. It happened in absurdly slow motion. Chuck knew before Andy had even finished throwing the punch that the other man was going for his solar plexus again.

Chuck moved, too, in that same weird slow-motion. His hand, still raised in a plea, cut down, like he was trying to slam a basketball toward the ground. He knocked Andy’s punch aside. His other arm went up for balance.

Andy struck out and grabbed Chuck’s raised hand at the elbow. He twisted and in a move that was too fast for even Chuck’s new senses, locked Chuck’s arm behind him, stepping around Chuck. Pain shot all the way through Chuck’s side as Andy pushed down hard on his elbow and shoulder, forcing him to a prone position.

Chuck struggled down halfway and surprised Andy by dropping all the way to his knees. He turned in the same direction Andy had pulled his arm, dug one foot into the ground, and half-tackled Andy. It was sloppy and it wrenched his arm like nothing else, but it caught Andy unawares. They both tumbled. Andy’s grip loosened enough for Chuck to pull his arm free.

He lurched up, scrabbling for purchase in a brief but furious wrestling match. Somehow he ended up kneeling over Andy, his knee on the other man’s stomach, hand trapped under Andy’s leg even as he used his other forearm to hold Andy down. “Andy—no! Stop—”

Andy freed an arm. The right hook caught Chuck at the base of his jaw and sent him flying back. His entire world flickered and went red as a dentist drill drove a hole straight through his brain. He screamed.

The odd hypersensitivity only intensified the pain. It was like getting hit in the face with a concrete truck.

He lay on the ground, positive he was mostly dead. It was the partially alive part that was worse. When Andy grabbed him by the front of his shirt, now torn and bloodied, Chuck didn’t fight back. He couldn’t. All he could see now was a blurry version of a too-clear world. Everything in his body ached. What wasn’t aching was throbbing. And what wasn’t throbbing or aching had been stabbed by a knife that some sadistic devil had gleefully twisted. He felt like somebody had dumped kerosene on him and tossed a match. His skin was all but crackling and peeling under the heat of flames he couldn’t see.

Andy put him in a headlock.

“Good work, Foxtrot.” Carver’s voice appeared first. Chuck struggled to focus his streaming eyes so that he could see the scientist, who emerged from behind a tree. The gun in his hand was unmistakable, even with Chuck’s vision cutting in and out. “It seems Delta’s time away from us has been…detrimental to his programming.”

Chuck spat a bloody wad on the ground. His entire face burned. “Go to hell,” he still managed to say, though each word quaked through his head, reverberating again and again with painful echo. The world wavered between black and clear. “Both of you can go to hell.”

“Tsk-tsk,” Carver said, stepping closer. “Language, Delta.”

Chuck’s reply turned the air blue. It only made Carver give a small smile.

“Yes,” he said. “We have so much work to do. You’ve learned so many bad habits in your years away. That would be the fault of your handlers, I expect. And Agent Larkin.”

“Wh-what about Bryce? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Foxtrot, a little gentler, if you please. We don’t want to damage the goods even more than we already have.”

“What _about_ Bryce?” Chuck asked again, straining forward. Andy, listening to Carver’s commands, slackened his grip, and Chuck almost moved to attack, but his knee crumpled at the last second. Andy caught him before he hit the ground and pulled him to his feet again.

This made Carver frown. “Foxtrot,” he said, “on second thought, deliver Jack from Sally’s care.”

Chuck had a split-second to wonder why Carver had pronounced the word “deliver” so strangely—he’d accented the first syllable oddly—before Andy wrenched his arm behind him in a hold. He whimpered. “Uncle! Uncle! Wha- _why_ are you doing this?”

“It’s not for your sake, Delta, don’t worry.”

“I—ah, ow.” Andy, behind Chuck, only cinched his grip tighter. “If it’s not for my sake, then _why_?”

“The pair of you might have been my brightest pupils, but you always needed a little more encouragement than the others.” Carver wasn’t looking at Chuck, but at Foxtrot behind him. His eyes were glittering with something like malice—madness, Chuck realized through the haze of agony searing down his leg. He’d thought Carver was insane before, but he never realized just how much of a psychopath he was dealing with.

And this psychopath was the one holding all of the strings to Chuck’s existence as a very scary meat puppet.

“Isn’t that right, Foxtrot?” Carver asked. “It’s your fault I had to make an example out of Tango. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir,” Andy said, his voice entirely emotionless.

“Make an example of…” Chuck started to say, but the sudden headache slammed into him harder than Andy’s fist ever had. He blinked and he was standing not in a clearing in the middle of a Los Angeles park, but in a field, in the cold, in the middle of nowhere, at dawn. A woman lay on the ground, a small, neat hole in her head.

There was blood on the lenses of her rimless glasses.

Kneeling over her, looking stricken, was the very same man holding Chuck back now. His name wasn’t Andy. It wasn’t even Foxtrot. It was Gunnery Sergeant Garret Kohl, who’d been dishonorably discharged from the Marines—or would have been had he not volunteered for Project Omaha…and then Project Lincoln.

Just like now, Carver stood in front of both of them—Tango, Foxtrot, Chuck, the others—holding the gun.

Chuck no longer felt the inferno of agony. He was suddenly very, very cold. Whatever denial there had been about all of this happening, that this couldn’t be real, that this wasn’t his life, there was none now.

“You utter bastard,” he said. He strained against Kohl’s arm-lock, though he had no idea what for. There wasn’t anything he could do, not with Carver pointing that gun at him. It didn’t matter. Chuck still struggled. “What the hell have you done to us, you bastard!”

“Foxtrot!” Carver snapped.

Kohl applied pressure to Chuck’s shoulder and elbow again, forcing him down. He cried out in pain, especially since he’d landed on his left knee, but he continued to fight, twisting, straining away from Kohl. Carver. Carver had done this to them. He needed to stop Carver.

For Tango’s sake. For Kohl’s sake. For his sake.

Kohl forced him to the ground. Chuck just fought harder.

“Delta, control yourself,” Carver said.

“Rot in hell,” Chuck said, even though Andy was pushing his face into the ground. “You took my life away, I’m not letting you do that to me again!”

“Oh, Delta, Delta, Delta.” Still holding the gun up, Carver knelt—not too close to where Chuck struggled on the ground, but near enough. “You always were the most idiotic of them all, weren’t you? Too bad I’m smarter than you. Oh, and,” now his eyes gleamed with that unholy madness that made Chuck’s insides freeze, “I think I’ll go to the fair this May.”

Instantly, Chuck stopped fighting. It wasn’t like the world stopped or ceased to exist like it had earlier, when he had run for the staircase and obviously hadn’t made it. No, calm drifted over everything, like somebody had gently drawn the curtains. The fight drained from Chuck’s muscles and so did most of the pain. It felt pretty nice. Everything felt good again, good and calm, and he could possibly lie like this for hours, at peace—

_You’re being controlled, moron._

Well, at peace except for Casey’s voice, which was rather annoying no matter what state of relaxation Chuck was in. He liked the other man, he really did, but Casey could get rather gruff. And right now was peace-time.

“Go away, Casey,” Chuck mumbled, and his mouth tasted like dirt. Why was that?

Oh. He was on the ground. Andy had been shoving him into the ground. Well, that was rather silly.

_If you don’t fight, he wins._

So what?

_So you won’t see your girlfriend or your sister or the gnome ever again._

“Get him to his feet.” Carver’s voice cut through the torpor a little. Chuck’s body still felt light and heavy in turns. He vaguely realized he was no longer being crushed into the dirt, but standing on his own two feet. His left leg hurt.

Peace-time had to end. But why? It felt so nice to just drift…

 _No_.

It wasn’t Casey’s voice this time, Chuck realized, but his own, coming from some place inside him that he hadn’t really acknowledged, even though he’d known it was there the whole time.

_No. End this, Chuck. Only you can._

He wanted to ask: but how? How can I do that when the world is drifty and things only hurt a little bit and there’s a madman with a gun and his mindless little minion?

_You have once. Figure it out, moron._

Okay, that was Casey’s voice again. Maybe his head a little too full.

It was hard to concentrate when his thoughts were sliding over one another, interrupting and slipping away like they were coated in Teflon. He knew he was being walked somewhere—where, he couldn’t determine, for that thought eluded his questing fingers—with Carver walking backwards in front of him, the gun aimed at his chest, and Andy gripping his shoulder and elbow. Chuck had to break away from them, no matter how good and numb everything felt right now.

He had broken away once. What did that mean? This weird peace-time was…it was something Carver had done to him, with the words about—about… Chuck couldn’t quite remember. But it was important. For some reason, it was important that he fight, that he remember the tranquility was a bad thing.

_Carver will kill everything you love. He threatened to, once before._

Even in his dopey state, Chuck knew that was a bad thing. He struggled to hold onto the idea, though it slipped and skidded through his mental fingers. He should be frantic, but instead everything felt like it was floating on a breeze. He needed that to stop. But how? Wait, he’d broken something Carver had done to him, hadn’t he? When was that?

Chuck stumbled. The world turned red around the edges as he jarred his bad knee. But the second Kohl pulled him to his feet, serenity began to spread through his body once more. He felt it coming on in a wave, and the part of him that wasn’t trapped in softness struggled harder. He’d kicked Carver’s machinations once before. Recently, his brain pointed out. He’d done so recently.

When he’d woken up at the computer.

But _how_?

 _A flash_ , Casey’s voice whispered. _So flash, moron_.

How? Chuck asked again to the world, but the world didn’t reply. Flashes weren’t things he controlled; he looked at screens and the information that Beckman and Graham sent, and sometimes the flashes hit and sometimes they left him alone. He was not in control of the Intersect. The Intersect controlled him.

Just like Carver.

“This way, Delta.” Carver’s voice was fuzzing in and out like an old radio receiver. Chuck felt his body turn as Kohl guided him in a new direction. He trudged onward, thinking like a drunk, whose thoughts wouldn’t connect; they were vital and important and almost lovely, but razor sharp, too. “Foxtrot, once he’s secured in the car, clean yourself up and kill Agents Casey and Walker. The sister, too. Time we made good on that threat.”

He’d forced himself to flash once, but when had that been and wait a second—had they just—

The Santa Monica Pier. For a split-second, it was like he was really there, though he knew he hadn’t gone anywhere, that everything in his head was a happy fog that felt nice and almost clean after years of doubt and fear. He could taste the cotton candy on the air—kill Agents Casey and Walker? What the—listen to the crowds of families, enjoy the sea breeze; think about the bomb and the madman behind it all. Laszlo Mahnovksi. Now there was a name, though Chuck had no idea why anybody’s parents would name their child Laszlo and—he had to stop Carver.

A map of the Santa Monica Pier. An aerial map. He couldn’t let Kohl near Casey or Sarah, they’d never suspect that Andy Kohlmeier was actually—he’d flashed on the map. At the Pier, he’d been running after Sarah, watching the way her ponytail bobbed up and down with every step, and he’d been thinking about the map, and he’d flashed but it was on something in his head—

Chuck flashed.

It wasn’t a full flash, not one of the ordeals that would leave his head feeling a little too tender for comfort. It was, at most, a reprise of the very same flash he’d had on the Santa Monica Pier, just a map and some structural specifications.

It was enough.

The fog cleared. He had a split-second warning to brace himself before the sensation returned: not just the weird high-definition vision and hearing, but the pain, oh, the agony of it, in his jaw and his leg and his ribcage and his arms. He gritted his teeth hard, which only made his jaw hurt more, but it kept him from whimpering. It kept him from giving himself away.

They were still near the apartment, but halfway across the park. Carver really was going to take him away, Chuck realized. His body went icy cold when everything finally processed: Carver would take him from his life, would put him in some permanent trance. He would kill Casey, Awesome. Ellie. Sarah. And he’d probably come back and clean out Morgan, half the Buy More, and some of Burbank just for the hell of it.

Casey and Sarah had no idea what was coming for them if Chuck didn’t do something and even worse, Ellie…He couldn’t think about that. If he thought about that, his brain would stutter to a stop and then he wouldn’t be able to stop Carver. And he had to stop Carver. He had no choice.

Could he escape? No, if he ran, and he suspected he wouldn’t be able to run far with the way his leg was literally quivering every time his foot touched down, that wouldn’t solve anything. He had to neutralize Carver somehow, make it so that Carver wouldn’t be able to give Kohl or him any of those orders. So he had to neutralize Carver’s voice.

And then he had to get Carver far away from him for forever and—

 _One thing at a time, Chuck_. It was Sarah’s voice that cut through his terror now. The fear receded the tiniest bit.

So he had to take out Carver’s ability to command him. That meant a jab to the throat very much like the one he’d given Carver earlier. He ran down the list of moves he’d seen Casey or Sarah do. The problem was that most of these were frontal attacks and Carver was not only too far out of Chuck’s reach for a simple lunge to surprise him, he was also facing away, leading Chuck and Kohl across the park. To where, Chuck still didn’t know.

He could risk the lunge. But was that smart, with his leg like this? He’d have to break away from Kohl in the process, since Kohl still had his elbow. It was easy to startle a regular guard with normal, human emotions. Kohl wasn’t like that, though. Whatever phrase Carver had used on him, it had returned him to that blank slate from earlier. It was a pure and total stab in the dark, but Chuck guessed he wouldn’t startle easily enough for Chuck to neutralize Carver.

Chuck had been up the creek without a paddle before, of course, but had it ever been this hopeless? He couldn’t afford not to do anything. But what the hell could he do?

 _Use the weapons you have on hand_ , Casey had always said.

He had no weapons. All he had was the Intersect that Bryce Larkin had saddled with him, and no self-defense lessons. He didn’t even have his watch or his cell phone. The only weapon he really had was himself. Yeah, that was a big help. The only reason he was a weapon was because somebody had turned him into one.

Except…

He wasn’t the only weapon here. He’d heard Carver giving Kohl orders, using the code-phrases. Audio triggers. After all, the last thing he remembered from before he’d woken up at the computer in the middle of a flash had been Carver’s voice. So Carver controlled the Lincoln soldiers through the use of his voice. But what if his voice changed? Voices changed due to sickness, sometimes aging. Surely a man like Carver would have thought about that.

Something spurted through Chuck. It almost felt like hope. Carver wouldn’t have trained his victims to respond to his voice alone. That was why he’d pronounced the phrase so oddly when he had controlled Kohl earlier. So nobody would accidentally set off one of his victims unknowingly.

Triggering Kohl to go against Carver would be almost too easy—except, Chuck realized, that Carver could simply deploy another control phase and set Kohl right back on Chuck.

Chuck would have to make it count. Otherwise, everybody he knew would die. And he only had one chance to make it work. What had Carver said to Kohl? Deliver Jack from Sally’s care? He’d pronounced “deliver” oddly, too. Chuck wasn’t entirely sure what the phrase was meant to do, but it was all he had.

No, he realized. He had more than that: he had the joint-operation-enabled Intersect belonging to the C-I-Friggin’-A. The same Intersect that he had unwittingly used to save his own butt earlier. It had told him a list of code-phrases. He just had to pick one and hope for the best.

He wanted to collapse into the sidewalk and simply cease to exist, his leg and his body hurt so bad, and he was so scared that the world didn’t even seem like it was in color anymore. He almost wanted to cry.

Instead, he indexed the flash in his brain, bringing up the list of trigger commands. They didn’t seem to be associated with any of the seven agents that had been conditioned by Project Lincoln, which made things look somewhat hopeful. Possibly. He deliberately picked the one that sounded the most innocuous.

Carver was a fan of irony.

And when they made a turn on the sidewalk, out of the view of the apartments to their left—Chuck’s apartment building—he made his move. He gritted his teeth hard, threw the last of his sanity to the wind, and dropped to his knee. He let out a scream—it was like kneeling on a hot stove—but used his body to wrench Andy down. When the other man tumbled, Chuck lunged forward, ready to whisper the phrase.

“Don’t move.” The sound of the gun cocking was unmistakable. Chuck looked up slowly, fearfully. Carver had gone beyond affably and indulgently amused by his antics. The scientist looked downright pissed. “Freeze, Foxtrot. They really have taught you more bad habits than I thought, haven’t they, Delta?”

“Go to hell,” Chuck panted, breathing shallowly to avoid screaming.

“Get a new phrase. Foxtrot—”

Chuck screamed, cutting off Carver in mid-sentence. While the other man blinked at him, Chuck threw himself down on the concrete and whispered, “Rewind that to the fourth frame and stop, please.”

He said it with a lisp, like the Intersect said to.

“Now, if you’ve quite finished being a drama queen,” Carver started to say, “I think it’s time to—Foxtrot? What are you doing?”

Andy Kohlmeier, aka Foxtrot, aka Garret Kohl, simply climbed to his feet, pulled out his gun, and unloaded an entire magazine into Dr. Carver of Project Lincoln. Chuck stared in dazed horror as the silencer jerked with each new shot.

Carver hit the concrete.

Kohl switched to a full magazine, discarding the empty cartridge on the ground. He turned to face Carver—

“FBI! FREEZE!”

Kohl turned, the gun already going up. But the woman, or at least the blurry outline of the woman racing toward them, didn’t wait. She fired. The sound of the gunshots that followed after Kohl’s silent and brutal takedown of Carver seemed unnaturally loud. As was the sound of Kohl’s body hitting the ground just like Carver had only instants before.

****

**4 FEBRUARY 2008**   
**SAN LEANDRO MEMORIAL PARK**   
**23:37 PST**

“Agent Bartowski, I really think you should go to a hospital.”

“I’m fine,” Chuck said, though he knew he wasn’t. He’d never been fine and he never would be again, but he didn’t know what to do about that, so he treated it like the dead bodies on the ground: he ignored it. Everything but his body felt better that way. Sure, there was a feeling similar to hysteria building up beneath his sternum, which might erupt out of him in the form of a fit of unstoppable giggles or screams, but if he just ignored it and stared ahead, he’d be fine. Most likely. “I just need to lie down.”

“I don’t think so.” Agent Virginia Grey, the FBI agent Sarah and Casey had planted in the apartment courtyard before they had left, grabbed him by the shoulder when he would have wandered off. She had a large knot swelling near her hairline on the right side of her forehead, but she looked concerned—for him. “At the very least, you have a concussion. And you shouldn’t be standing on that leg.”

He was a weapon. He’d killed a man, and he was a weapon.

“I’m fine,” Chuck said again.

“Please, the paramedics will be here soon, and I think that you need to see a doctor—”

“I can wait inside for one,” Chuck said.

“No, I can’t leave the scene and take you to your apartment, not until the police get here, and I need to contact the ops leaders. Please, just sit down, you’re starting to scare me.”

“You’re the one with a concussion. I didn’t hit my head that hard. And I’ll sit down inside,” Chuck said, and shrugged off the grip she had on his arm. He stepped over one dead body, skirted around the other, and wondered if he should probably feel anything about that. He figured he should, and that he would later. But the second Agent Virginia Grey, thinking Chuck was in danger, had woken up and had mowed Andy-Foxtrot-Kohl-Kohlmeier down with three shots to center mass like any well-trained Quantico agent… From that moment, it was like Chuck was back in the peace-time Carver had forced him into with the trigger phrase.

Right. Because he could be controlled with a trigger, just like a weapon. He was a Manchurian Candidate. He was Jason Bourne without Matt Damon.

He was an assassin.

Like Sarah and Casey were assassins. But Casey and Sarah made that choice, they had the training and the willpower to do whatever they needed to do in the name of good and government.

Chuck…didn’t.

He took the elevator up to his apartment, limping with every step. He was bleeding—he knew he was bleeding, and he could feel the blood, sticky and warm, mixing with rapidly drying sweat and pain. However he felt, and he felt plenty bad, he knew he looked worse. If any of his neighbors wandered out of their apartments, they would scream.

They didn’t. He let himself into the apartment, looked around in a daze for any other mad scientists—Carver was dead, the man who controlled him was dead—lurking in the corners to beat the hell out of him. There weren’t any. He’d promised Grey he would sit down, so he took the nearest seat and just collapsed into it like all of the muscle and sinew in his body had wilted past their expiration date.

The coffee table was splintered—he could see Kohl over him, kicking and kicking, while Chuck fought—and the furniture overturned. The apartment was cold and he didn’t know if it was fading adrenaline—going down the zip-line, running barefoot in the—or just the fact that it was February.

The world twitched in and out, like a TV signal from a bad antenna.

He closed his eyes, but all he saw was Kohl’s slack face, never flinching as he shot Carver, the trigger Chuck had used to end another man’s life. He opened his eyes and let his vision focus and blur. Time passed.

When he blinked, he was staring at the computer screen on the desk. They didn’t use this computer much. Casey occasionally checked emails and Sarah worked on it whenever she was at the Bachelor Pad “keeping an eye on Chuck,” but Chuck never gave it much thought. Absently, not really thinking about it, he reached over, tapping numbers into the keypad.

A panel in the floor opened at his feet, revealing Sarah’s back-up service piece. Oh. Right. He’d forgotten that was there.

Would that have helped him? It would have killed Carver and Kohl more quickly, certainly. But would he have pulled the trigger?

His hand was shaking a little, quivers all up and down his arm, when he reached into the desk and picked it up. Still heavy, he thought vaguely. He pointed it at the door.

Carver was dead. Kohl was dead.

Chuck lowered the gun and placed it on the desk, frowning at the smudges of blood he left on the hilt. Sarah would be annoyed that he was bleeding. She’d be mad about the gun, too, but she’d be angrier that Chuck was dripping out parts of the Chuck she liked—loved? Adored?—so much all over the place.

He told himself to stop, but the blood kept dripping. With a shrug that made his head sing and his leg scream, he wiped his hand on his pants. He looked at the computer screen and then away. The ambulance Agent Grey had called would probably be there soon and so would Casey and Sarah. Another ambulance, only this time it would take Chuck away the same way it had taken Bryce earlier that day.

Was Bryce still alive? Did he know? A frown pulled at Chuck’s face, or it did until he remembered that his jaw was throbbing. He looked at the gun on the desk. Why did Bryce even matter anymore?

Why did anything matter anymore?

Chuck looked at the screen again. Files, he thought. Always files. Beckman and Graham sent them. Casey and Sarah reviewed them. Chuck flashed on them. Carver told him to hack them. The government told Chuck to code them. The Intersect told Chuck to decode them.

What the hell did it matter? Tomorrow there would just be another new file with another new terrorist in it with another new mission to run and another set of ridiculous orders to follow and it was all crap, absolute crap, and—why was Sarah’s name on this file? The words were like a gust through the fog, clearing away the haze and allowing his eyes to narrow and the synapses to begin firing again. Subconsciously, he picked up the gun, his hand tightening around the hilt. If somebody was out to hurt Sarah—

But it was about Project Lincoln.

What? Why would Sarah’s name be on something to do with Project Lincoln? Chuck switched the gun to his left hand so that he could scroll up to the top of the document—the same one Carver had been in the process of getting him to delete in the weird Lincoln-triggered-trance—and see the objectives and title.

An interoffice memo, he saw. The CIA eagle was all but sneering at him from the top of the page. FROM THE DESK OF LANGSTON GRAHAM, DIRECTOR, CIA.

Some official language followed—Eyes Only, Top Secret, the usual bureaucratic bull crap—but Chuck’s eyes cut very quickly to the only important line of the memo.

_Please note for the record that Walker, Officer Sarah, has been read into Project Lincoln operations, Level Echo and adjust her pay accordingly._

Chuck looked at the date.

17 October 2007.

Slowly, he put the gun down. Everything stopped hurting. There was no rushing in his ears. There was no agony in his knee, no bright taste of pain in his mouth. The pounding in his skull had ceased completely. So had most of his thoughts, so that there was nothing but silence in his head. He couldn’t even feel his pulse, which had slammed pain through him with every heartbeat a second before.

Sarah had known about Lincoln.

Sarah had _known about Lincoln_.

Sarah had known about him. She had known about what people could make Chuck do with a simple turn of a phrase. She had been briefed and paid accordingly to know that he was a sleeper assassin.

She had known.

She had kept it from him.

She had let him walk around in his everyday life, let him walk around his sister and his friends and people that he trusted, people that _trusted him_ , and she had known everything. The entire time. From the day he’d come back to Burbank, she had _known_.

Calmly, far too calmly, Chuck pushed himself away from the desk, leaving the gun and everything it meant—Sarah’s gun—behind him. He hobbled to the couch and pulled off the cushions. His hands were shaking, but he still couldn’t feel anything as he ripped out the padding under the cushions, revealing the box Casey didn’t think he knew about.

Getaway money. Still feeling nothing, Chuck flipped the latch and one by one removed every single passport. He didn’t look at Sarah’s picture in any of them.

He didn’t know what he would do, but he knew it would be bad.

She’d _known_.

He took out the blocks of money—Euros, dollars, Yuan and Yen—and set it on the same coffee table he’d been knocked over earlier. Then he replaced the passports that didn’t belong to him and loaded a few of the trinkets from the floor around the coffee table back into the box to simulate its weight. It took very little effort to replace everything on the couch where he’d found it. He walked upstairs and collected the crumpled pictures of Ellie and Morgan he had kept sewn up in his parka for all of those years in the bunker. Those went into his pocket. He grabbed his shoes and fresh clothes.

After he’d dressed with particular care to his leg and damaged torso, he crossed to the side of the bed where he’d once created a small cave for sleeping purposes, blocking off the rest of the room. It hurt like nothing else to lower himself to the floor, but he did so, hissing air through his teeth. He unearthed the old shoebox of his Magic the Gathering cards and selected the Prodigal Sorcerer, sliding that into his pocket. Though getting to the floor had hurt, it had nothing on climbing back to his feet. He grabbed the wall to keep upright as dizziness and pain made his vision tilt.

Then, knowing the ambulance would be there soon, knowing that if he couldn’t face a picture, he wouldn’t be able to face the real thing, he loaded the money, all of his passports, and—without looking at it—the picture frame from the computer desk into the bag he’d left lying on the floor upon coming home earlier, and walked out his front door.

She had known the entire time.

By the time he heard the scream of the ambulance siren, he was already driving away, and his leg hurt.

Chuck ignored both and kept driving. He didn’t know how long he drove, just that traffic lights and stop signs and everything blended together. Scenery passed by in a blur where pieces of it seemed oddly stuck in that new high-definition that had become his vision, but time passed in great forgotten chunks. At some point, he stopped at a park and ride lot and swapped license plates. At some other point, he ordered coffee through a drive thru. He filled up his car with gas.

None of it mattered.

Sarah had known the entire time what he was. She had lied to him, had looked him in the face and had completely lied to him when they were supposed to be partners and to trust each other and she had _known_.

Chuck drove away into the night. They would be pissed, but they had to understand that he couldn’t come back. He’d used a man to kill another man, just a simple turn of a phrase, and another man was dead. And somebody could do the same thing to him, and Sarah had _known_ and had still let him wander around, at any second a danger to everything he loved. And even though he had promised he wouldn’t, he left.

It was better this way.


	56. You Only Leave Twice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is in every living creature an obscure but powerful impulse to active functioning. Life demands to be lived. Inaction, save as a measure of recuperation between bursts of activity, is painful and dangerous to the healthy organism—in fact, it is almost impossible. Only the dying can be really idle. — _H. L. Mencken_

# PART V: ZEUS

**14 MAY 2008**   
**BUNKER 77142135**   
**06:00 OMST**

The alarm clock rang.

Chuck didn’t roll over or move to acknowledge it. Since he’d glanced at the clock seventeen minutes before, he’d been keeping count in his head, ticking off the seconds and then the minutes, the ten minutes, the five minutes, until it was time to roll out of his sleeping bag and face yet another day.

His final day.

Siberia in May was almost balmy…for Siberia. Chuck imagined that if somebody from the tropics ended up in Siberia, they’d view it as something close to the apocalypse, and that view wouldn’t be far from the truth. He’d gone outside the day before, to stare at the landscape and wish it a final good-bye, and everything had just seemed bleak, like he imagined an apocalypse to be. Somebody creative like a poet or an artist would probably find some kind of consummate beauty inside the bleakness, but Chuck had just seen a barren landscape and a metaphor for his own prison.

He’d gone back inside and fixed himself a final MRE, knowing he wouldn’t eat today. The nerves knotting his stomach into pieces wouldn’t allow for it.

Still, appearances had to be maintained. So once he crawled free of his bunk, he rolled the sleeping bag up and stowed it neatly at the foot of the bunk. He took his time in the shower, trimming his beard to a manageable length very close to his face and combing his hair so that he looked presentable.

Neatly, routinely, as though he did it every day, he packed all of the possessions he wished to keep. The last time he had left the bunker, it had been with only the clothes on his back, pockets stuffed with rations, the pictures sewn up into his parka. He’d put his life in the hands of…

He scowled and closed the bag with just a little too much force, which meant he had to stop and take a deep breath. He couldn’t keep thinking things like that. Everything had to be in control. He had to remain in control. He didn’t have a choice.

A glance at his watch—picked up off a street vendor in Seville and checked routinely for surveillance—told him he had only half an hour. He finished closing the duffel bag a lot more gently and took his pack out into the kitchen, leaving the bunk room precisely as he’d found it three months before: in militarily precise condition. The rest of the bunker was a different story altogether.

He’d spent the day before overworking the bunker’s incinerator, divesting the world of some of the darker realities of Project Lincoln that he had uncovered in the CIA’s database, all of which had been printed up and stuck with putty to the cinderblock walls. The files had been tucked away so deep that even Graham himself likely knew nothing of them all. This made one side of Chuck’s mouth twist up, humorlessly. The walls had contained secrets even the Director of the CIA probably didn’t know existed for weeks, just lying out in the open for anybody who visited the bunker to find. He really was the greatest security threat the CIA had ever hired. Now those same walls were looked bare and almost forlorn, the less-incriminating articles and files abandoned by their damning brethren. Chuck couldn’t bring himself to actually care.

He couldn’t bring himself, for that matter, to care about much these days. Some of it was by choice. Others—he couldn’t afford to care about.

With only half an hour left, it couldn’t hurt to look around one final time, make sure he hadn’t missed anything, though it likely wouldn’t matter anyway. He went through the bunk room first, stepping under the red twine he’d used to string significant events together. Following that twine, he checked the kitchen and down the brief hallway to the office.

His computer was on.

Had he left it that way? Chuck frowned; he left the computer running most nights so that it could analyze chatter, pick up signs of any Lincoln trigger phrases being used. It was also set to alert him to see if anybody had twigged to his location, though he’d turned that off. They knew where he was. But had he shut down all of it the night before?

Warily, he stepped into the office. He didn’t reach for a gun. That was a Lincoln reflex. That was no longer his way.

The screen was mostly dark, though it was on. In the center, a single cursor blinked. As he blinked back, words scrolled across the screen.

ARE YOU ALONE? Y/N

Chuck felt all of the saliva in his mouth dry up and his stomach suck itself inward, leaving a vacuum of panic. He knew firsthand all of the precautions he’d set up on that machine. For somebody to have hacked his computer…

His fingers trembled as he touched the keyboard. WHO IS THIS?

A FRIEND. ARE YOU ALONE? Y/N

Chuck stared at the words. The last time he’d faced something that cryptic, he’d been Intersected—in the very same spot, standing just like he was now since the office was the only room tall enough to let him rise to his full height.

The similarities made his heart pound. But, he thought, he already had an Intersect and the bosses had made it clear that he’d lost the game. And the amount of security he’d set up around the bunker would let him know somebody was coming. He checked the monitors.

Siberia was as cold and depressingly empty as ever.

His fingers hovered over the ‘Y’ key. What was the harm? He’d see anybody coming, and they’d be there soon anyway. He tapped the key.

The words on the screen disappeared immediately, to be replaced with fresh ones. DO YOU HAVE THE INTERSECT? Y/N

Goosebumps that had nothing to do with the cold raced up Chuck’s arms to the back of his neck. HOW, he typed, DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE INTERSECT?

I HAVE MY SOURCES.

The words hovered there for ten seconds before disappearing like they had before. Chuck reached for the keyboard once, twice, to demand his mysterious ‘friend’ list all of his sources, but paranoia held him back. What if this ‘friend’ was bluffing?

Finally, new words appeared. And Chuck’s breath clogged in his chest, the room spinning a little.

I INVENTED IT.

Months of searching in Burbank and finally here in Siberia, of pulling apart every government file in search of the mysterious inventor of the Intersect, hacking almost every computer from the President’s to the mailman’s, and Chuck hadn’t found the inventor. The inventor had found him.

His hands were beyond trembling, making it difficult, but he managed to type, WHO ARE YOU?

ORION.

The Intersect had two creators listed. Codenames O and P.

Orion.

The great hunter in the sky, known for his prowess with the bow and arrow, Chuck thought. It was apt. Orion had hunted him down to a secure bunker in the middle of nowhere and had obliterated his firewall like soggy tissue paper.

But for what?

The words on the screen changed, answering his question.

I CAN REMOVE IT.

Chuck’s hands fell away from the keyboard. He could almost feel his body sag, as if he were some kind of puppet whose strings had been cut by a ruthless puppet master. His heart continued to thud against his ribcage, pulse spiking in his ears. All of that told him it wasn’t a dream, but his brain just couldn’t seem to accept that.

He lifted his hands and typed in a simple message. HOW?

NOT SECURE ENOUGH. WILL CONTACT YOU AGAIN IF YOU WANT MY HELP. DO YOU? Y/N

Did he? Once he had the Intersect removed, he was no longer property, Chuck thought. His final tie between the government that had screwed him over and himself would be sliced. Thanks to Carver and Lincoln, his mind wouldn’t fully be his own ever again, but he would no longer belong to the United States government.

But without the Intersect, what would stop the Lincoln programming? What would stop him from being taken over when his guard was down and he allowed somebody to get close? Terror at the thought hat he could be used against innocent civilians—or anybody, really—had led to so many sleepless nights, he sometimes felt like a lifeless zombie, drifting through reality with his cognizance checking in only when it was convenient. It all boiled down to one thing: what right did he have to remove that safety net, that Intersect between society and the monster inside him?

Every right. It was his brain.

No right at all. He would do everything in his power to preserve human life.

The words blinked on the screen, replaced by words that felt far more urgent.

DO YOU WANT MY HELP? Y/N

Chuck placed his hands on the keyboard. This could be his only chance. A hacker as powerful as Orion wasn’t someone to be found: he was the one that found you.

And if Orion could remove the Intersect, Chuck could truly be free of the invisible bonds…and so could the monster.

His finger hit a single key.

N.

For a long time, the screen stayed blank. Had Orion left? Was he (or she—Orion could be a codename meant to throw somebody off a lady-hacker’s scent) disappointed? Relieved? A sick ball of dread rose in Chuck’s chest, even though he knew he’d made the right choice. He’d seen a man use Garret Kohl, a functioning, breathing man who should have had his own thoughts and his own ideas; he’d seen Carver use Garret Kohl to try and kill Chuck as though Kohl were nothing but a Golem. Chuck had in turn used Kohl, like that very same Golem, to kill Carver. Somebody with the right information could do exactly the same thing to Chuck. Without the Intersect, he was vulnerable and everybody he knew was vulnerable because of it.

The screen flickered and new words appeared.

IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND, GET IN TOUCH.

HOW?

CHECK THE ADS IN THE WASHINGTON POST TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY. YOU’LL KNOW IT WHEN YOU SEE IT. I CAN HELP.

“No you can’t,” Chuck said aloud, the first words he’d spoken in nearly a week. His voice sounded foreign to him.

GOOD LUCK, Orion told him, and the computer shut down on its own, making Chuck shiver. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to marvel over how easily the hacker had done that. Movement on the monitor gave him a split-second warning before the alarms began wailing.

A snowmobile was coming in, and coming in fast. He checked, only one snowmobile. Relief and disappointment spiraled through him.

Chuck moved out of the office and gave the bunker one last look. With a shrug to himself, he switched the generator not to the off position but to the increased power load position, picked up a small radio receiver and his pack, and left the bunker one final time to meet Casey.


	57. Crossing the Rubicon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Etiquette requires us to admire the human race. — _Mark Twain_

**14 MAY 2008**  
 **BUNKER 77142135**  
 **07:45 OMST**

The roar of the snowmobile seemed to chop the Siberian silence in half. Chuck heard it even before Casey came into view, a distant buzz that grew closer with each passing second. He calmly set his goggles around his neck and stared at the tree line. Casey roared into sight; Chuck took a deep breath that shook, but not with the cold. He didn’t have a choice, he told himself. The email had made that, if nothing else, perfectly clear.

Best to get it over with.

Carefully, torso so erect that he felt robotic, he lifted the pack so that it was over one shoulder. He waved.

Casey cut power to the snowmobile. He took his time settling his feet on the snow, lifting his goggles. His scowl could be read for hundreds of miles. “Couldn’t you,” he said, “have found some bolt-hole on _American_ soil?”

“Sorry,” Chuck said, his voice surprisingly normal. “Nostalgia wins out against practicality every time.”

Casey blinked at him, as though Chuck had grown a second head instead of a beard. The NSA agent looked exactly the same as he had three months before—or even eight weeks before. Truthfully, Chuck hadn’t gotten too good of a look at Casey then; he’d been too busy running through Barcelona’s red light district to really study Casey, or Sarah. Though later on, he wished he had. The real thing had nothing on the photograph buried in his pocket.

He missed her like somebody had actually carved out a piece of him.

Casey cleared his throat. Chuck pushed those thoughts away. “So that’s it,” Casey said, nodding at the passageway behind Chuck.

“Cozy, right? You want a tour?”

“I want to get out of this damned country, Bartowski.”

“Fair enough,” Chuck said. He adjusted his grip on the remote in his hand before he pulled his goggles on. It cut into the bright dawn light—dawn light that had been around for over six hours, as Siberian summer meant the coming of the midnight sun—making him squint less. It took his legs a moment to remember how to function and move forward. He almost expected to hear creaking as he propelled himself toward the snowmobile, climbing on behind Casey and grabbing hold of Casey’s parka. Without waiting for Chuck to say anything, Casey revved the engine.

The snowmobile took off, almost seeming to leap into action as though it were channeling Casey’s impatience to be off of this continent. Chuck began counting in his head, following the equation he’d worked out a couple of days before. When he reached eight-Mississippi, he pressed the button on the remote.

The bunker blew up. He didn’t even have a split second to imagine three years of his life as pieces of rubble, like he’d thought he would while carefully lining the walls with C-4. He’d spent far too much time doing that, he knew, thinking about how the office where he’d spent so many hours of slavery would go first, followed by the bunk room, and finally the kitchen. The same kitchen where he’d once shared a drink with Sarah, with its little shelf where he’d stored the munchkin bottles of Tabasco sauce that came in the MREs, all lined into rows like the soldiers they would never reach, as they were forever stuck in the bunker with Chuck.

All of it, he’d imagined flying at the camera like a Hollywood model set in a soundstage

In reality, there was a popping noise like pressure being released, and then the ground shook beneath the snowmobile. Chuck glimpsed only one fireball blooming orange behind them before Casey cursed and jerked the snowmobile hard to the left. For a second, Chuck thought they would tip over, and wondered if it would hurt.

Casey righted the vehicle and leaped off, gun in hand. “Get down,” he said, grabbing Chuck’s shoulder to shove him behind the snowmobile. “I don’t know how many of them there are—”

Chuck’s hand stopped working. He dropped the remote on the snow.

It was done.

“What the hell—” Casey broke off with a swear and stooped to pick up the remote. He whirled on Chuck, fury clearly evident on his face. “Did you do this, Bartowski?”

“It’s gone,” Chuck said, staring at the burning smear on the horizon. “It’s all gone.”

His last haven. His prison, now reduced to a black line of smoke and burning debris.

“Bartowski!” Casey grabbed the front of his parka and hauled Chuck around to face him. He filled Chuck’s vision, but Chuck just replayed the explosion—the Hollywood and reality overlapping each other until one became the other—over and over again in his head. He’d done it. He was free, clear of the bunker, and there was nowhere left to go but forward; his lifeline and his limitation had gone up in smoke.

Casey shook him, hard. Chuck looked at him.

“Bartowski, answer me, dammit. What the hell did you do that for?”

“It’s gone,” Chuck said.

Casey gave him a disgusted look. “Great. If I’d known this was the Bartowski I’d be going to collect today, I’d have packed a goddamned straightjacket.”

“You don’t understand,” Chuck said, ignoring the way his brain told him the words should hurt. Nothing was allowed to hurt or touch his emotions now. That risk simply wasn’t allowed.

“You’re damn right I don’t understand. Get on the snowmobile. Nobody probably noticed the blast but there’s no reason to chance it and stand here with our asses hanging out. Move.”

“No,” Chuck said, staring at the landscape and all of its Siberian glory. “You don’t get it. I can’t go back.”

Before Casey could bodily haul him onto the snowmobile, he lurched away. He dropped to his knees and unceremoniously upended everything he’d managed to eat in the past twenty-four hours onto the snow.

**14 MAY 2008**  
 **SIBERIA**  
 **09:57 OMST**

The sound of the snowmobile engine being cut made Chuck’s brain catch up with the rest of him and politely inform him that they’d been slowing down for awhile, and had even come to a stop. He cursed; that kind of lapse couldn’t happen. He had to stay aware and alert, always focused, always on edge in case his suspicions were wrong and somebodydid know the Lincoln trigger phrases. But it was hard to do when his brain felt a bit like it was rattling around inside of a bowl of soup instead of inside his skull and his body felt so weary and so food-deprived that every limb weighed more than the snowmobile, upon which he was currently sitting behind Casey.

Cautious, he forced himself to lift his head. He hadn’t huddled into Casey for warmth—he was brain-damaged, not suicidal—but he’d kept his head down, hoping to avoid windburn on the parts of his face exposed around the goggles and the face cover. He blinked furiously, as his eyes had watered up with the cold, but the sight didn’t change. Casey had pulled the snowmobile up in front of a house. It was ringed with wooden fences for miles, though Chuck didn’t see any livestock. Or anything else, really, but snow and trees.

“Casey?” he asked.

“It’s a restaurant. We need to eat.”

Chuck hesitated.

“Relax,” Casey said, pulling his own balaclava down so he could apply chapstick. “Nobody in the government knows we’re stopping here.”

Casey swung off of the snowmobile and headed for the front door. Belatedly, Chuck realized that there was a sign over the door. Since he couldn’t speak Russian without somebody misquoting Wordsworth at him in a Southie accent, and he’d never remember it anyway if they did, Chuck gingerly climbed off of the snowmobile and pushed himself to his feet, stumbling a little dizzily. The minute he straightened, he reprimanded himself. No matter how he felt, he had to stay in control.

Inside the restaurant, it was cold, but not the same burning cold as outside. Grateful for that much, at least, Chuck pulled his face cover down and dropped his goggles around his neck once more. It allowed him to get a much clearer picture, though there wasn’t much: two long tables, lined by low benches rather than chairs. Lanterns instead of electric lighting, a giant fire roaring at the hearth. The far left corner of the room seemed to be a tiny kitchen, as there was a cooking fire and a woman in a bright red sweater manning a stove.

“Sit,” Casey ordered, pointing toward the fire. Chuck was only too happy to oblige, as he’d lost feeling in his fingers and toes six weeks before. Casey headed for the kitchen. Chuck didn’t bother to listen too closely, though he figured Casey was probably ordering them food in a local dialect of some type.

He sat and stared at the fire. It was soothing.

Within thirty-six hours, he’d be back in Washington D.C., he thought, and the back of his throat felt sticky with nausea. It was universes away from a tiny Russian restaurant, but here he was, nonetheless, watching the movement of the fire, and knowing he couldn’t go back.

“Here.” The bowl hitting the table at his elbow sounded unnaturally loud. Chuck looked away from the flames.

“What’s this?”

“Shchi,” Casey said.

“Bless you,” Chuck said.

“Shut up. It’s local food. Eat.”

It was soup, Chuck could determine, but beyond that, all bets were off the table. He poked curiously at the top layer of green—with brown bits bobbing about in it that had to be some kind of meat—and sniffed. “Don’t do that,” Casey said. “You’ll offend our hosts. Just eat it.”

Chuck scowled, but picked up his spoon, which looked hand-carved. He scooped up a steaming spoonful, took a bite, and had to clench his fist to keep from gagging.

“What’s your problem _now_?”

“It’s sour.”

“So?”

“So I don’t think this much acid’s gonna go well with my stomach.” Chuck gave the green and brown soup a nauseated look. “Casey, I can’t eat this without tossing my cookies again, which will probably offend our hosts even more.”

Casey turned toward the woman in the corner and called out something in Russian. She nodded and disappeared through a doorway—apparently there was a second room after all. It made Chuck uneasy to realize he’d missed that detail.

“What’d you say to her?”

“That my delicate princess of a traveling companion needs something to settle his precious stomach.”

Chuck scowled. “Thanks, Casey.”

“Anytime.”

The woman appeared back in the room and hurried toward Chuck and Casey with a wooden cutting board in front of her. On it…Chuck’s mouth began to water. That was actual, homemade bread.

“Tell her thank you?” he asked Casey when the woman set the bread on the table.

Casey rolled his eyes, but whatever he said to the woman seemed to work, as she inclined her head and left them in peace with the bread. “Well, go on. Eat up.”

Chuck didn’t reply. The bread tasted too heavenly to waste time on conversation, especially given the nature of Casey’s current mood. Chuck had already plowed through three pieces by the time his head began to feel less fuzzy and disconnected. By that point, real appetite, not just the need to feed his emptied stomach, had returned. He dug into the Shchi with a little less trepidation, though the flavor hadn’t improved much. Casey, across the table, didn’t seem to mind: he polished off a bowl and requested a second, which the proprietor was all too happy to bring over, all smiles.

Chuck had a second bowl, too. It wasn’t out of a desire for more food: he simply didn’t wish to offend complete strangers with the fact that he found their food disgusting.

“Do we need to go soon?” he asked as he dug into the second bowl.

Casey shrugged. “Whenever. We’re early, and nobody’s going to trace that explosion back to us for a while, the lazy commies.”

“I burnt any ties to me before I did it,” Chuck said, intending only to be helpful.

The attempt failed. Casey glared at him. “What in the good name of Archibald Henderson, may he live forever, did you do that for, Bartowski? You know we’re on enemy soil.”

“Enemy soi—really?”

“What of it?”

“It’s just a bit…dramatic, isn’t it?”

“I’m not the one who blew government property sky-high!”

“A government prison,” Chuck said between his teeth.

“Nobody put you in there the second time, Bartowski.” Casey ripped a piece of bread off a little too viciously for Chuck’s comfort.

Chuck, meanwhile, took a deep breath. _Don’t get angry_ , he told himself. He needed to remain on an even keel or blowing up the bunker and destroying his last safe haven would have been completely for naught. If he let control slip, truly slip, for too long…

“I’m sorry about Barcelona, Casey,” he said. “But I couldn’t go back until I knew for sure.”

“I told you things were fine,” Casey said, glaring. “Nobody would touch you. You had my word.”

Chuck reminded himself that he needed to stay emotionless, though he wanted to argue. “I’m sorry,” was all he said.

For a moment longer, Casey continued to scowl at him, and Chuck empathized with any enemies the Marine had faced in battle. He also wondered how many of them had wet their pants, but eventually Casey just scowled and mopped up the last of his Shchi broth with a bit of bread. “I guess you found what you needed.”

“As much as I could,” Chuck said, which was the honest truth.

Casey grunted for the first time in Chuck’s company, and the noise was almost a homecoming. “Sleep at all? You look like crap.”

“Some. And thanks.” Chuck rolled his eyes and turned so that he was staring at the fire, his arms crossed over his chest. He huddled inward, somewhat protectively, and tried to ignore the assessing look he could feel Casey giving him. His hands were shaking, but that wasn’t anything unusual. His hands were always shaking these days.

“You never said,” Casey said.

“Said what?”

“Why you blew up the bunker, moron.”

Chuck shrugged and looked harder at the fire, though he had no idea what he would find there. He finally looked away, but it was only to pick up the mug of coffee so black, it left soot on his esophagus all the way down. He took a long sip and hid his grimace at the taste. “Because I can’t go back,” he said, setting the coffee down.

Casey rubbed a hand down his face. “And it never occurred to you to just say, ‘Hey, I should just not go back to the bunker?’ You had to involve munitions?”

“Well,” Chuck said, “I can’t let you have the market cornered on being a drama queen.”

He received only a grunt in reply rather than the threat he expected. After a long silence had stretched out between them, Casey cleared his throat and fiddled with his coffee mug, a twin to Chuck’s own. “Why come back?” he asked.

“Email said I had to.” He’d monitored his email carefully, using mirrored IP addresses and a thousand other hacker tricks to keep them from triangulating his signal to the bunker. The email from the Office of General Diane Beckman had startled him: he hadn’t expected such a blatant move. He’d checked to make sure that there had been no audio attachments to the email. There hadn’t been. There had only been a date and an “I expect to see you in D.C. by then, Agent Bartowski. We have much to discuss.”

How the woman could drip authority from plain text, Chuck didn’t know. But he got the feeling that Beckman knew exactly where he was the entire time. And on the heels of that suspicion had come the thought that missing this meeting with Beckman would be very bad indeed. So he’d contacted Casey.

The same Casey that now let out an actual snort. “Cut the bull, Bartowski. You evaded two highly trained intelligence operatives for over three weeks and vanished completely off of the map. Ignoring one, and pardon me for saying so, old woman’s email would be the easiest thing in the world for you to do.”

“Maybe. Have you met Beckman? She’s scary.”

Casey glared at him, and continued to glare for so long that the levy wall of humor that Chuck had tried to build up during their meal crumbled further. He sighed. “Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I want to.”

“So you _want_ to come back to the people that—”

“No,” Chuck said before Casey could say it aloud. He lived with incontrovertible proof of what the government had done to him—his knee would probably never fully heal, and the memories would never leave—but he still didn’t want to hear it spoken aloud. “No. But I don’t want to keep running.”

“So what _do_ you want?”

Chuck thought of Orion’s offer to remove the Intersect. “I want to be left alone,” he said at last. “I want the things in my head to be only the things that belong there. Things that came from me. I have…pieces in my head that aren’t me. Other people did this, and they changed who I am and what I do without me having any control over it.” A hollow laugh barked out of him, surprising him, but he pressed on. “Do you know what the medical term for that is?”

Casey met his eyes. “Schizophrenia.”

“I signed up to help my country and they gave me brain damage.” That rage that never seemed to go far threatened to swell. Chuck clenched his left fist and released his fingers one at a time, counting them in his head, slowly, until the rage subsided. It was never fully gone, as the embers remained, but it could be subdued. “So what I want is to be left alone with whatever pieces of me I have left, and that’s all.”

“I guess you have a plan,” Casey said.

“Depends.” He had contingency plans in place. Paranoia would demand nothing less. But it relied on one fact. Even though there had always been insults—some more serious than others—and Casey had once threatened to put a bullet in his skull, the NSA agent had always been straight with him. And there wasn’t a single shred of evidence that pointed to Casey or Beckman or even anybody in the NSA knowing about Project Lincoln.

It wasn’t much, but it was all Chuck had. So he stared hard at Casey. “What’s waiting for me in Moscow, Casey?”

He almost expected a heartfelt and sincere statement that Chuck wasn’t walking into a trap. But Casey scowled. “Two of the biggest pains in my ass,” he said. “What else?”

“What?”

“Your sister and Walker insisted on coming as far as Moscow. That’s the party waiting for us when we get back tonight.”

“Oh.” The entire restaurant grew even colder. Chuck kept his grip on the coffee mug, but only through sheer will. He’d genuinely thought he would have another twenty-four hours before he would have to face Ellie’s wrath or…whatever Sarah had in store for him. The thought alone made nerves spring to life, stark and colorful and terrifying in their intensity. That evening would come all too soon. It also couldn’t arrive quickly enough.

And all of it might be a trap. He swallowed hard and hoped he wouldn’t have to relive the Shchi the same way he’d relived the MREs from the day before.

“If there are agents waiting for me in Moscow, Casey, I will run,” he said.

Casey snorted. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good thing you left us a nice handy crater to find you in your little bunker again.”

“I’m serious, Casey.”

“Really? Because taking a trip hundreds of kilometers into the middle of commie territory to collect your skinny ass is your idea of a joke?”

He had to think hard about that one as he swallowed another mouthful of that vile coffee. The disgust so plainly evident on Casey’s face almost made him want to smile, of all things. “Touché,” was all he said. “There aren’t agents waiting for us in Moscow?”

“What could you possibly hope to do if there are, Bartowski?”

“I already said I’m going to disappear.”

“Good luck doing that again. You realize there are going to be agents in D.C.”

“Yes, I realize that.”

“Walking around,” Casey went on, swirling the dregs of the coffee in his mug. “Looking at you. Some of them might actually even talk to you.” He made an overly shocked face.

Chuck scowled. “Don’t be a jerk,” he said.

“Don’t make me come back to the middle of this pinko wasteland again.”

“Maybe I’ll feel the need to visit my old home, Casey. Ever think of that? I did spend three years there. A man might get nostalgic.”

“Home sweet crater,” Casey said, sneering.

Chuck felt twin spurts of annoyance and the same humor from a minute before. “It’s like I never left. God.”

“Trust me, it’s not. Are you ready to go? I want to get out of here.”

The thought immediately sobered all feelings of annoyance and any camaraderie. Their next stop would be the airstrip, where the plane that would take them the rest of the way to Moscow awaited them. Moscow, where Ellie and Sarah were.

“Yes,” Chuck lied. “I’m ready to go.”

**14 MAY 2008**  
 **HOTEL IZMAILOVO GAMMA-DELTA**  
 **18:12 MSK**

Chuck stared up at the hotel sign—written in English below the Cyrillic lettering—in dismay. The hotel was located on the outskirts of Moscow, where they wouldn’t be noticed, Casey had put it. They’d hop a flight out of Domodedovo in the morning headed for D.C., but for the night, they had to camp with the locals. At the Hotel Izmailovo Gamma-Delta.

Delta.

It made Chuck want to lose his brunch of Shchi and coffee, now a very distant memory. There was no way this could be a coincidence.

Indeed, Casey turned from paying their cab driver, pocketing his wallet. “Like it?” he asked as Chuck continued to stare in mute horror at the sign above the hotel’s leaded-glass doorway. “I picked it out myself.”

“Very funny, Casey,” Chuck said, and gave him a sour look.

Casey shrugged, completely unrepentant. He then shoved Chuck forward by the shoulder. “Let’s get this over with. March.”

Chuck swallowed hard and allowed himself to be pushed forward. Fear and anger and a thousand emotions that couldn’t be quantified coated the inside of his stomach like a sickness. If there hadn’t been any turning back at the bunker, there definitely was no escape now. Casey had called from the airstrip where he’d parked the borrowed plane—”Called in a friend from an old…colleague in the private sector. Don’t ask.”—to confirm that Ellie and Sarah were waiting for them at the hotel. They were inside. They would see him again.

Would Ellie cower away from him? What would Sarah do? Would they be normal, like Casey had attempted to be? Chuck had seen a lot of sidelong glances during the six-hour plane ride from the wilds of Siberia to Moscow, glances that told him Casey wasn’t any surer than he was about where they all stood. Casey had tried to put up a good face, Chuck knew. For Casey, that meant sarcastic commentary, mild put-downs mixed in with genuine questions and half-hearted offers of support.

Whatever happened, Casey was on his side. Ellie would be, too, Chuck knew. But Sarah…

They walked past the front desk in the lobby and headed not for the elevator, but a set of stairs. It wasn’t terribly well-lit inside the hotel, and nothing was glossy or bright like the chain hotels in America. This was an old building converted to a hotel years before, Chuck determined, though some renovation had been done recently.

Casey nudged him up two flights of stairs. “This is us,” he said on the third story. “Stay here. I want to check on something.”

“Check what?” Chuck asked, everything going still inside him. _Trap_ , his mind whispered. _It’s a trap_.

“Just check. Stay put.” Casey gave him a look and headed away down the hallway.

He told himself to calm down. He’d come back on his own, after all. He had to trust Casey was a man of his word. His eyes cut to the window at the end of the short hallway. They were on the third floor. It was a bit far to jump, and he hadn’t seen any interesting architectural details on the side of the building that would allow him to escape like Jason Bourne had from the embassy in Zurich.

He was effectively trapped. A bead of sweat slid from under his hairline into the collar of his shirt.

Casey knocked once at one of the doors down the hallway and listened close. Whatever he heard from inside seemed to satisfy him, for he nodded and gestured to Chuck. “It’s safe. Come on.”

Shoulders back, spine absolutely rigid, Chuck took one step and then another. Casey watched him walk with upraised eyebrows. “They’re women, not a firing squad,” he said under his breath.

Chuck gave him a sour look. They were a hell of a lot more than that.

Casey shrugged and pushed the door open with his free hand, inviting Chuck to go first. As much as Chuck would have liked to take a moment, sort out the wriggling nerves in his midsection, he could feel Casey’s eyes on him. So he took a deep breath. It was either a trap, or it was his sister…and Sarah. He knew which was the more frightening possibility. With the two pictures burning a hole in his pants pocket, one old and one taken from his apartment, he stepped inside.

The room was nice. He had vague impressions of wallpapered walls, a sofa, a television, the regular assortment of furniture to be found in hotels around the world. If he’d had time to study it, he imagined he’d find it pleasing to the eye. But he ignored all of that, for standing by the couch, hands clasped so tightly together that Chuck could see red and white stripes on her fingers, was his sister.

Chuck tensed. Would she cower away in fear? She _should_ , though he knew if she did, the tension holding him upright might very well collapse.

Ellie gasped. “It’s you,” she said. “Oh, my god, you’re alive. I was so worried!” She shot across the room like a cannonball, barreling at him. He stamped hard on the instinct to recoil away, and instead let her hug him.

Guilt writhed through him. _Oh my god, you’re alive_.

“You…you didn’t get my message?” he asked when he could speak.

Ellie didn’t let him go. “I did. I got the card, but I was worried sick about you. They said you were okay, but I didn’t believe them—I had to see it for myself, and you’re here, you’re safe.” She took a step back, keeping a grip on his upper arms that was a little frightening in its strength, and studied his face for a long time. “You’re here, and you’re safe. I’m so glad.”

“I’m glad to see you, too, Ellie,” Chuck said, though it was hard to return her smile, not when it was so full of hope and happiness. The guilt stopped writhing and instead settled like an anchor in his stomach.

He’d had to run. Nobody would have been safe until he knew.

“And now that that’s out of the way…” Ellie trailed off and let go of his arm to punch him in the shoulder. Hard. “You jerk!”

“Ow!”

“You left me something from a stupid card game!”

“I told you—”

“You couldn’t have picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey, Ellie, I’m alive?’ That was too hard?”

“El—”

“Your apartment’s covered in blood, you’re gone, an FBI agent is telling me you had a _concussion_ , and you left me a _toy_ to say you were okay!”

Chuck didn’t dare look away from her angry expression, though he wanted to. The guilt and shame were now so heavy, he was surprised he didn’t hear the floorboards beneath his feet begin to creak and buckle. He felt his shoulders sag. “Ellie, I wanted to call. A thousand times, I wanted to call, but I just couldn’t be sure…”

“Who to trust,” said a new voice, and all three of the room’s occupants looked up to see Sarah standing in the doorway to one of the suite’s bedrooms.

Over a week of lying awake in his bunk in that tiny bunker in Siberia, fretting over this moment, hadn’t given him a single jot of preparation. He’d envisioned a thousand different scenarios—Sarah would ignore the government’s word and come to collect him from the bunker herself, Sarah would show up in the plane, on the trip, at the airport, on the street. He would turn and she would be standing there and his heart would stop, and he’d finally know how he felt about everything she had done and he had done, and there would be some sort of closure between them.

None of those daydreams and scenarios could hold a candle to this.

His heart didn’t stop. If anything, it pounded harder, battering itself against his ribcage and making the blood swim dizzily through his head. Sarah had only gotten prettier. It shouldn’t have been possible—she’d lost weight, there were bags under her eyes—but after six weeks of nothing but the photograph currently in his pocket, she was real again, and more beautiful and fragile and strong than ever. She watched him with a reserved look on her face, eyes wary, posture neutral. He’d imagined a hatred growing upon first sight of her. He’d also envisioned falling to his knees in a helpless puddle and forgiving her on the spot.

Neither happened. All he felt was uncertainty, and doubt, and the ever-present fear that had made him throw up on the snow earlier.

He licked his lips and, never looking away from her, said, “Hi, Sarah.”


	58. Take a Knee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Truth hurts—not the searching after; the running from. — _John Eyberg_

**14 MAY 2008**  
 **HOTEL IZMAILOVO GAMMA-DELTA**  
 **19:29 MSK**

“Okay, lift the leg one more time.”

Chuck obeyed. He was tired from the full day of travel—leaving and blowing up the bunker, going a couple hundred kilometers on a snowmobile, traveling in a tiny plane with only Casey as company, navigating Moscow—but he knew better than to argue with Ellie’s tone of voice. The second she’d caught even the merest hint of the limp he’d been trying to hide from her, Ellie had set in on Chuck like a pit bull. He remembered the over-protectiveness that had always set in whenever he’d run into illness or injury as a child and teen, far too well. It hadn’t changed.

Ellie shifted, probing at his left leg. He didn’t bother to hide the wince—the knee was still sore. “Lower it,” she said, frowning at whatever she felt.

Chuck sighed and did as ordered. “If I’d known I was going to be doing butterfly kicks all night, I would have brought my old PT gear.”

His sister apparently didn’t find his joke all that amusing, as she leveled a flat stare at him. He’d switched from the parka and snow pants of the bunker to jeans and a dark, short-sleeved shirt, as Moscow was a sight balmier than Siberia in May. But whatever his outfit, Ellie wouldn’t have found that funny anyway, he figured. His Army days were now officially a sore spot all around.

“Why didn’t you get help?” she said, sounding exasperated. “Chuck, you could have done permanent damage to your knee.”

His brain was the thing permanently damaged. “Ellie, I already told you—”

“You could have come to me. Or Devon. You could have gone to Devon. Even one of our colleagues.”

“And that would have led the others right to me,” Chuck said, glancing inadvertently at the closed doorway to their right, through which Sarah had disappeared over an hour before. Casey had also retired for the night. Or maybe he was tired of the awkwardness. He hadn’t specified.

Ellie’s frown deepened. “You’re my first priority, Chuck. I wouldn’t have given you away.”

“I’m not saying _you_ would. But they would have found out either way. Ellie, I didn’t have a choice. I had to run. I didn’t know who knew what and who could control me and turn me into…” Chuck trailed off and swallowed back the bile that inevitably rose whenever he thought about what had been done to him.

Ellie set his leg down, letting him relax back into the couch cushions. “I brought some pain meds with me. Just…in case,” she said, and rose to cross to the room’s dining room table. A very awkward dinner had taken place there two hours before. “They wouldn’t tell me how badly you were hurt, so I thought it best to be prepared for everything.”

“Most of it was superficial,” Chuck said. The change in topic didn’t pass him by. It was easier to ignore the elephant in the room, actually, and something of a relief. He’d seen the look that came across Ellie’s face when he’d first dropped the word “monster” at dinner. It had been beyond uncertain: bewildered, a little frightened. Whether it was of him or for him, he didn’t know. And he almost didn’t want to, as that made just a little bit of sickness and rage threaten to well up. “The knee was the worst part. The concussion healed fine.”

Since Ellie was facing away from him, rummaging through her bag, he saw the tension shoot through her shoulders and back. “You drove for six hours in a stolen car with a concussion,” she said.

“I had to deliver the card. I had to let you know—”

“I’m amazed you didn’t kill yourself or worse, someone else.”

A flash of the empty look on Garret Kohl’s face hit Chuck, followed by the sound of Carver’s body hitting the pavement, nothing but meat now that he was dead. The FBI agent’s shout before the second round of bullets. Kohl hitting the ground, just as dead as Carver.

Chuck gripped the hem of his shirt with his right hand, out of the line of Ellie’s sight, his knuckles tightening and flexing as he tried to channel all of that emotion into his fist and out of his body. He couldn’t react. He couldn’t afford to. Casey and Sarah hadn’t told Ellie that Chuck had been the one to pull the trigger, so to speak, on Carver, and as a result, on Kohl. That much had become obvious during dinner. It wasn’t Ellie’s fault. She didn’t know he had killed someone.

It was one of the myriad things that kept him awake at night, staring at the underside of the bunk above him.

“Here,” Ellie said, and returned to the couch. She put two small blue pills in his hand.

“What are these?”

“Pain meds. They’re mild, but they should help you sleep with that knee bothering you.”

Chuck squinted at the pills. “What are they called?”

Sighing, Ellie told him the name. Her eyebrows rose, and rose farther still, when he pulled out his phone and searched Wikipedia. When the name and description fit the pills in his hand, he nodded, but still handed them back. Ellie took them with a hooded look on her face.

“Worried I’m going to poison you?”

“I can’t take any risks,” Chuck said. “I’m sorry.”

“But I’m your sister. I would—”

“I’m not saying you would. But your bag’s been out of your hands at the airport. You didn’t make those drugs yourself.” Chuck shrugged. “There’s a sixty percent chance they were the legitimate thing.”

“And a forty percent chance they weren’t? What would happen then?”

“Oh, I’d start to feel dizzy and sick, and a SWAT team would bust through the door,” Chuck said, and tried to infuse a little humor into his voice. As it had ever since he’d arrived in Moscow, the attempt fell flat. “It would be a party all around. But my knee doesn’t hurt too much. I’ll be fine.”

The same bewildered and scared look from dinner crossed Ellie’s face again now. “Chuck…why did you come back? You’re so paranoid about everything, and you have a right to be, but why come back to the heart of everything that caused you to be…”

“A monster?” Chuck asked.

Ellie’s face hardened. “A victim.”

“Victim, monster, the fact doesn’t change that I am what they made me to be.”

Ellie jerked her head, gesturing that Chuck should move to the table. Wincing only a little—Ellie’s flexing his knee about had made it sorer than it usually was at this hour—Chuck rose and limped over. Ellie, however, went to the stove and began to fill the suite’s kettle. Most of her problems were usually handled with a cup of tea or a single glass of wine.

It made him feel homesick; not for the first time that day. He pushed the feeling away as he sat.

Ellie set the kettle on the stove and used the firelighter to light the burner with enough ease to tell Chuck that she and Sarah had been at the suite for at least a couple of days, waiting for Casey to come back with Chuck. Once the water was on to boil, Ellie came back to the table and sat down across from him. She picked up his hand. He avoided flinching away, but only just.

“Chuck, please, tell me: why did you come back?” Ellie asked.

“Casey already asked me that.”

“Good for him. I’m the one asking now. It’s obvious that you’re scared—you’ve glanced at the window and door regularly since you got here, you regard all food as suspicious, and the thing with the pills…do you think somebody is going to come after you?”

“It’s always a possibility.” Chuck looked down. He’d had no human contact in over a month, so to say it felt strange for Ellie to be holding his hand was an understatement in the highest regard.

“Then why risk it, if you’re this scared? Is somebody coming after you? Do I need to be worried that somebody somewhere is just going to say something to you and you’ll…change?”

Chuck went silent for a long time. He’d wrestled with the very same thing every single day in the bunker, and then on the snowmobile even after he’d blown the bunker to smithereens. The doubt and terror had dogged his footsteps through the airport and Moscow. His brain had been a constant loop of _run, run, escape, idiot. Run._

But he’d searched everywhere. He had all of the evidence. Carver was dead. Most of the Lincoln secrets had died with him, and the rest sat in Chuck’s head.

“There’s always a chance of human error,” Chuck said at length, not meeting Ellie’s eyes. “There’s a chance I missed something. So I can’t let my guard drop because what if I did miss something and what if somebody else has to pay for my error?”

“Did you find what you were looking for, when you left?”

Chuck thought of the walls of the bunker. “Yes. I found everything on the Lincoln project that exists. Whatever Carver didn’t have me delete already.”

A dark look crossed Ellie’s face.

“There are only two people left alive that know anything about the Lincoln phrases,” Chuck went on when it was obvious that Ellie wasn’t going to speak. “And one of them won’t share what she knows. I know that.”

“And the other?”

This was the source of Chuck’s worry. Director Langston Graham had been read in on some of the Lincoln phrases. Not all, as far as Chuck could tell. Dr. Richard Carver had been as paranoid as Chuck was now, never divulging his secrets, always remaining on the move. His brain had been…brilliantly scary, Chuck had discovered while going through whatever he could find on Carver in the bunker. He’d taken subliminal messaging and autonomous control to the next level, a level that the government in the Cold War could only dream about. And when a committee had been appointed to look in on Project Omaha and its darker, seedier offshoot Lincoln, something so secret only a select few knew about it, Carver had seen the writing on the wall and had run.

Not only had he run, Chuck thought. He’d read the writing on the wall as a divine prophecy that only he should know about Lincoln, as far as Chuck could tell. The rest of the scientists and participants had been killed in a variety of car accidents, muggings gone wrong, and house fires. Only the six surviving subjects—as Tango had been killed early on in the programming to teach the others a lesson—had remained, five of them in bunkers across the world.

Assigned to, Chuck thought with a sick feeling, whichever continent they’d specialized in. A sort of first wave attack. Unstoppable killing machines.

Chuck fought down a wave of nausea.

“I’m not sure,” he said, answering Ellie now. “I’m pretty certain he wouldn’t share the specifics of the code phrases with anybody. He likes things to run his way.”

“Who are you talking about, Chuck?” Ellie stared hard at him, obviously willing him to look up and answer her.

He answered, but he didn’t look up from staring at his hand and watching her in the fringes of his vision. “The Director of the CIA, Ellie. He’s the one that gave Sarah the few code-phrases she has.”

“And yet you insisted Sarah was one of the ones allowed to bring you back,” Ellie said. Her voice had gone subarctic.

Chuck let that frost sit for a moment. Carefully, he withdrew his hand and leaned back, looking up at Ellie fully for the first time. “What happened between you and Sarah after I left, Ellie?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but the tea kettle whistled. “Hold on,” she said. Preparing the tea only took a minute, but it gave him ample time to wonder at exactly how cold Ellie’s voice had gone. Sarah’s face had been an expressionless mask throughout dinner, her mannerisms quiet and as controlled as his had been. She’d gone from being a mostly-open book to a closed case against him. Ellie’s hostility, on the other hand, hadn’t been at all hard to read.

Ellie placed a mug and a tea bag packet in front of Chuck. After he sniffed the tea bag, he shrugged to himself and dropped it into the mug. He bobbed it a couple of times, watching the colors of the water darken and curl around the bag. After a minute, he took the bag out. Ellie might have liked her tea strong enough to stand up and sing opera, but he preferred water overall.

“So you noticed,” Ellie said.

“That it turns into the north pole every time you and Sarah are in the same room? Kind of hard to miss.”

Ellie wrinkled her nose.

“Seriously, El, what happened?”

“I kicked her out. Not that she’s really been in Burbank long enough for it to matter.”

“Why?”

“Because she lied to you, Chuck! And then she and Casey refused to tell me everything that was going on, and I had to do _something_.” Ellie shot a vicious glare at the same closed doorway Chuck had been eyeing on and off throughout their conversation. “I don’t understand why you wanted her here.”

“Because.”

“But she knows how to control you.”

“She does,” Chuck said. Finally, he sighed and peeled off one of the finger-less gloves he’d been wearing all day, even under his thicker gloves in Siberia. On the back of his hand was a symbol in blue ink. The skin around it was cherry red.

Ellie stared at the tattoo in horror. “What the hell is that?”

“The Intersect,” Chuck said, as he rolled his sleeve up, revealing a second image similar to the first on the top of his wrist and then a third an inch farther up his arm, “is a little like Project Lincoln. In fact, Lincoln stole a lot of the Intersect technologies to make it work. They both work on stimuli, though the Intersect tends to focus on visual pattern recognition and Lincoln on aural pattern recognition. In doing some of my research, I discovered that the Intersect had a series of triggers, too.”

“Triggers to _what_?”

Chuck shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure. They’re flashes of embedded information. The creator—” Orion, his brain said, chiding him for ignoring that fact. The creator’s name was Orion, and Orion had contacted _him_. Orion could remove the Intersect. “—obviously meant them for something, but I’ve no idea what.”

Ellie picked up Chuck’s hand again, this time to get a closer look. “These trigger a flash every time?”

“Yes.” Chuck avoided looking at his hand. He was tired from the traveling and keeping in check. Even if the Intersect hadn’t started causing headaches after his fight with Kohl, flashing when he was tired always hurt a little worse. “The first is a pretty dated map of the Paris m&ecutetro. The others are an old data-file on some obsolete NASA codes and the recipe to New Coke.”

Ellie blinked.

“Yeah, I don’t get it, either. But I found them during my research and the Intersect cancels out any Lincoln programming, so…”

“So you have safeguards,” Ellie said, her voice wondering now. “That’s…kind of brilliant, little brother.”

“Thanks. I need to come up with something a little more practical than the gloves, though. Do you know how often you look at your hands? It’s a lot.” Chuck took his hand back and pulled the glove on, grimacing a little. The tattoos were still fresh enough to hurt. “It’s not enough, but it’s something.”

“It’s more than you should have to do.”

“Maybe. And don’t worry about Sarah.”

“Why the hell not? She lied—”

“She had her reasons.”

“She was a spy following orders?”

Chuck closed his eyes for a moment. There was always the doubt that Ellie was right, creeping up like black poison, as it had those first weeks on the run. Sarah had lied to him. She could be lying to him about anything. About everything.

She wasn’t. It might have made him as idealistic and short-sighted as Luke Skywalker, but Chuck had to believe something had been real. “She did everything she did for me, not for the bosses. It’s enough for me.”

Ellie went quiet for a long time, watching him with her arms crossed over her chest. “You have put a remarkable amount of trust in a woman who literally has the ability to turn you into a lapdog with a simple comment.”

Chuck scowled. “And who’s the one that told you she could do that?”

Ellie faltered. “She did,” she said.

“Right. So: drop it,” he said.

“Chuck—”

“She had her reasons for doing what she did. You may not agree with them, and that’s fine. But it’s enough for me.”

Ellie sighed. “I don’t want to see her break your heart again, Chuck. When you disappeared…”

“That was my decision. And it was my choice to come back. And so far, it’s been my choice _how_ I’ve come back. If that changes, so will everything else, but until then, I’m going to go forward as I see fit.” Chuck pushed the weak tea away from him. He’d rather have something stronger, but he wasn’t going to search around for it. Besides, alcohol was off-limits. Alcohol lowered the defenses.

“So what _are_ you going to do?”

“I’m going to meet with Beckman,” Chuck said. “And then I’ll decide what to do from there.”

“Are you going to run again?”

Chuck stared at the closed door. “Only if I have to.”

**15 MAY 2008**  
 **HOTEL IZMAILOVO GAMMA-DELTA**  
 **02:16 MSK**

Chuck picked up the black queen and fitted it onto the red king. He’d attempted to sleep: it would be yet another long day of travel the next day, and he needed the rest. But sleep was just something not in abundance these days, which was how he’d found himself wandering from the room he was sharing with Casey and into the empty dining/living room of the suite. He hadn’t wanted to watch TV for fear of waking up his restless spy roommates, so he’d rummaged quietly through drawers until he’d unearthed a deck of cards.

This was his sixty-fourth game of Solitaire. He’d lost most of them.

He turned over three cards, spotted a two that could be put onto an ace. It led to a chain reaction of filling up three of the four ace slots. Each card was placed neatly on the proper stack.

They would arrive in Washington D.C. late in the evening. His meeting with General Beckman was set for the day after that. Gwen Davenport had already assured him via email that she would be there.

Chuck turned over three more cards. Nothing. He turned over three more.

Gwen Davenport had sounded spitting mad at the government in the emails she’d sent, once those had begun to arrive. It hadn’t taken them long to realize that Chuck was checking his emails on his journey. Any attempts to trace these emails, however, had bounced all agents to a Pizza Express in Chicago. Chuck had heard great things about this restaurant on Yelp. He only figured it was a nice opportunity to let the agents get a bite to eat before they had to report failure to their bosses.

Casey had sent a couple “Where are you, moron?” emails. Chuck had sent postcards from Southeast Asia back.

He put a jack on the aforementioned queen and tapped a finger against it. The Jack of Hearts. His deck in the bunker had been missing that card. Chuck had eventually had to incinerate the deck, as it meant he couldn’t play a proper game of Solitaire again.

The door behind him opened. The silence that followed told him exactly who had awoken. After a second, Sarah cleared her throat. “Chuck? What are you doing awake?”

“Hi,” he said, keeping his face and his voice modulated. He glanced over his shoulder. She hadn’t worn his old Stanford shirt to bed. In fact, he didn’t recognize her pajamas at all, which meant they were probably new. He stood, though he had no idea why. He needed to stand. “I, ah, I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, not at all.” Hesitantly, Sarah ventured forward. “What are you doing?”

Chuck shrugged, looking down at the cards in front of him. “Playing Solitaire.”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“Not really. If you want the room, I can go—I don’t want to be in your way.”

“It’s a big room,” Sarah said. “I’m sure the both of us can fit.”

Chuck swallowed. “Right,” he said. He sat down and began to gather the cards, scooping them into stacks, straightening the piles, making sure each card lined up before he added it to the master stack. He didn’t look at Sarah, even when she walked by him to get a glass of water.

Even when she sat down at the table across from him.

His heart was hammering again. It was nerves and a thousand other things that he couldn’t identify.

Finally, the cards had been gathered.

“No Go Fish tonight, huh,” Sarah said.

“I don’t want to play games with you,” Chuck said. He set them off to the side and grimaced. He hadn’t meant to infuse a double-meaning into his words.

Sarah cringed. “That’s fair,” she said. Chuck looked down, ashamed and afraid and angry, wanting to never look at her again and desperately needing not to look away. He saw her hand begin to reach across the table, as Ellie’s had, and draw back, as if uncertain. “Chuck…”

“Yes?” he asked.

“Would you please look at me?”

Chuck lifted his head.

Sarah met his gaze. She’d lost weight. Chuck had noticed that earlier, but in the sleep-shirt and the pajama pants, she seemed almost gaunt. It hurt, knowing that he’d caused that. Some evil sliver of him felt vindictive and justified—she’d suffered, too, he wasn’t alone—and he wanted to look down in shame for that. There were lines of exhaustion on her face, lines that probably matched his. But she never looked away.

“I’m sorry,” she said, quietly. “I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for my part in what they did to you. I figure you won’t forgive me, and I don’t expect you to, but I want you to know that I am so incredibly sorry.”

Chuck had expected—actually, he didn’t know what he’d expected. But whatever it was, it had never really been an apology. Maybe he had figured she would start scolding him as she had at the Grand Canyon, as Ellie had almost from the minute he’d entered the hotel room. With Sarah, he had no idea. It wasn’t as though she’d given him much of anything but the impassive Agent Walker mask earlier. Some of that probably had to do with Ellie and the fallout of his leaving and her actions, but it meant that Chuck didn’t have a clue what was going on inside Sarah’s head.

The mask was gone now. Sarah’s expression wasn’t pleading, or angry, or any of the things he’d wondered about seeing. All he found was pain and quiet sincerity. One discomfited him a great deal more than the other.

“I get it,” he said.

“Even so.” Sarah shook her head. “Even so, I’m sorry, Chuck.”

“I saw the briefing. The first one, the one where you…” Chuck gestured, a bit helplessly, not wanting to say it aloud. It hurt and it burned, and he felt a piece of that rage that he tried to bury begin to slither out.

Sarah obviously tried for a smile, but her expression became more of a grimace. “Tried to kill Frank?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He’d watched it the night after Barcelona, cracking through all of Dave’s extra security around Castle from an internet café in Seville. He hadn’t wanted to—intruding on Sarah’s privacy like he had with the briefing between her and General Beckman felt _wrong_ , no matter how badly she’d hurt him—but he’d acknowledged that he couldn’t afford to be blind to what Sarah knew about him. He needed to know exactly what she knew, and so he’d hacked into Castle’s mainframe, broken through the protocols, and had watched every minute of Graham telling Sarah that Chuck was part of a Joint Ops experiment using subliminal training on soldiers that might get captured by terrorists and sent into solitary confinement. According to Graham, Chuck had volunteered to undergo the training, and maybe that was the truth. Maybe he had signed up for Lincoln.

It wasn’t like he remembered anything.

Graham had listed four phrases to Sarah, phrases that would control Chuck. Chuck had watched Agent Walker accept all of this with a nod. And after that, he had watched Sarah walk into the dojo and pound so hard on Frank that there were still indents on the dummy’s face.

The entire time, Chuck had been in his new office upstairs. Oblivious.

He sighed and picked up the cards, but he didn’t deal. He merely held onto the cards. “Was that the only one?”

“The only briefing? No, he had follow-up questions. Progress reports.” Sarah scowled.

Progress reports, Chuck thought. Just like those she’d had to endure with Beckman about the whole “Keep the Intersect in check” initiative.

“But he never told me anything more than the four original phrases. And I never told him the full truth in the follow-ups. I don’t think he suspected anything, but…” Sarah made a helpless gesture and fiddled with her water glass.

Chuck nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

Sarah looked up. “For what?”

“For being honest with me.”

“Oh.” Now it seemed Sarah was the one unable to look up. “I heard you talking to Ellie earlier.”

Chuck’s stomach twisted.

“Thank you for defending me to her. Though I don’t deserve it. And I think you know that.”

“If I really thought you were out to control me, I wouldn’t have come back.”

“What…” Sarah swallowed in the middle of her sentence. “What are you going to do now, Chuck? You wouldn’t come back without a plan.”

“No. I wouldn’t.”

One of Sarah’s eyebrows rose, and the move inspired yet another bout of homesickness, this time staggering in its strength. “Well?” she asked.

Chuck set the cards down. “I’m going to talk to Beckman on Friday. Gwen’s told me the government wants to buy my silence. They can’t kill any of the Lincoln subjects without killing all of us. And that would be _very_ bad for them.”

“You pulled the Greece bluff again,” Sarah said, frowning.

He hadn’t known she was calling it that, but he nodded. “Forewarned is forearmed. Either way, they can’t touch any of us, so they’re going to buy my silence, and I’m going to take their money, build a house up in the mountains, and I’m going to stay there alone, far away from society and keep everybody safe.”

It was the first time he’d voiced the full plan. He imagined he’d feel a sense of relief, or sadness, or contentment now that somebody knew what he was going to do. He felt nothing but empty.

Sarah, on the other hand, gave him an assessing look. “And?” she asked at length.

“That’s it.”

“That’s…it.”

“You were the one that taught me the value of a simple plan.”

“I see.” Sarah finished the rest of her water and met his eyes. “I know it doesn’t count for much, but whatever plan you have, if that’s what you really want, I’ll help you.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s the least I can do, after everything I did to you.”

So formal, Chuck thought. She had become so stiff and odd and formal, just like he’d forced himself to become in his time in the bunker. It was like they were the marionette versions of the Chuck and Sarah from months before, when Prometheus had been in full swing and when Chuck’s life had been a lie.

Since they were being formal anyway, he might as well get this over with. “I’m sorry I ran away from you and Casey in Barcelona. I know you guys probably got in trouble with the bosses over that.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s just that…I didn’t know then what you knew and there’s these pieces of me that aren’t me.” Chuck gestured at his head, vaguely. “It’s not just that there are phrases that can make me do things I can’t control, it’s that my whole brain is not mine.”

“Chuck, you needed time.”

“I never wondered, you know. Not seriously, anyway, about why I never bothered to get to the bottom of the bunker thing. And that’s strange, given that I researched any and every little detail of every case we ever received as a team. I thought about everything: Casey, Ellie, Awesome. You. I thought about you a lot.”

Sarah looked down.

“But when it came to me, I just assumed. And yeah, I know now that I was conditioned not to think about anything like that. So I didn’t, and now I’m this trained dog and I still don’t know which thoughts I think because _I_ thought them, or which thoughts some mad scientist with a tendency toward megalomania thought up for me. It took me two weeks in the bunker to focus on finding everything I could about Lincoln.”

Those had been a hard two weeks. His body had been on the verge of collapsing from shock and exhaustion, and his brain had been slippery. Every time he’d thought hard about Carver, trying to remember the years where he’d thought he’d been in a bunker, the thoughts had begun to slip away from him. The harder he’d held onto them, the faster they’d slid from his grasp. He’d learned rote and routine helped, as did having a focal point.

He clenched his fist as hard as he could now, released the tension in his fingers one by one. It grounded him.

“I think the one thing you’ve proven over time, Chuck,” Sarah said, her voice slow and measured, and Chuck looked at her, “is that whatever they throw at you, the things that make you Chuck are always going to overpower those.”

His heart thudded once, hard, against his sternum. It grew a lot harder to breathe, though he forced himself to remain steady. “Do you think so? I wish I could feel the same way.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Chuck nodded.

“What do you want from me? Why tell Beckman that I needed to be involved at all?”

“I needed people I can trust.”

“But how? Knowing what I know…”

“Sarah, I get why you did what you did.” Chuck finally gave into the stress and the exhaustion and rubbed his hands over his face. He was tired, even if his heart was still thumping adrenaline through his system. “I wish you’d told me, but I get it.”

“I was going to. I know that doesn’t matter, not now, but when I went away, I was…” Sarah tugged at her hand, fidgeting now. “I was trying to figure out how to tell you.”

“Tell me that I was a patient in isolation testing?”

“It’s worse than that.” Sarah took a deep breath. “Nobody told me anything official, but there were signs that pointed to it being more than basic isolation conditioning. Basic isolation conditioning shouldn’t ingrain you with common spy habits, or make you a perfect shot.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I don’t want to keep this to myself anymore. I’m sick of it. I did that for months, and no more. I’ll help you get that big house in the mountains, but I’m not keeping any more secrets for anybody. Including you.”

The sudden fire in her eyes had him taking a deep, shaky breath of his own. “That’s fair. I won’t ask you to.”

“So I knew it was something more and I chose not to see it, even though there were signs.”

“It’s okay,” Chuck said. “I don’t blame you.”

“You should.”

“It’s a lousy situation overall. Which is why I’m coming back, I’m getting the money, and I’m going to the mountains. You can go back to being the kick-ass spy, Casey can go do whatever Marines-y thing he does, and this whole thing can be over.”

Sarah’s face fell for just a split second, but she nodded, her lips disappearing as she bit them. “Of course,” she said in a neutral voice. “Whatever you want, Chuck, we’re all in this with you.”

“Thank you.”

“Well…” Sarah stood and deposited her water glass in the sink. She wouldn’t look directly at his face, though she did turn toward him. “You should get some sleep. We could both use it.”

“Okay.”

“I’m glad you’re back, and that you’re safe.”

Chuck merely nodded. She was almost to her bedroom door before his nerves finally kicked into gear. He turned, suddenly. “Sarah?”

“Yes?” She didn’t turn, but he could see the tension in her body, just like Ellie’s earlier.

“I have to ask. Did you ever…” _Please say no_ , Chuck thought. He wanted her desperately to say no, though what would that do? It would make things even more complicated than they already were if she’d never used any of the phrases on him, as that would spur more guilt that he felt over everything. But if she said no, would it be the truth? He wouldn’t know any differently. “Did you ever use any of the phrases? On me?”

Sarah stood still for so long that he nearly repeated the question. Finally, she turned around. “Yes,” she said. “I did. Once.”

His heart crashed to his feet. It hurt worse than he thought it would. His hands began to shake again, so he slid them under the table, out of her view. She had to catch it—the woman saw everything—but she didn’t say anything. “When?” Chuck asked.

Sarah bit her lips again and turned away, this time to brush at her cheek before the tear could fall. Her eyes were too bright when she looked back. “At the motel, when Fulcrum was closing in. You were—you weren’t in good shape, and then you started coughing and I was scared you were going to pass out. I didn’t know what to do and we didn’t have any time. So I used the calming phrase Graham gave me.”

He vaguely remembered the Heartbrake Hotel, and coughing, but he didn’t remember Sarah saying anything to him. But then, he didn’t really remember much about what had happened in his own apartment with Carver. His mind logically knew that phrases had been used during the encounter, but those were even more slippery than his thoughts from the bunker.

“I see,” he said. He felt his body deflate, as though his sinew and tendons had stopped working. She’d used Lincoln programming on him. He’d known she probably had—she’d spent four months dealing with his agoraphobia and the other thousands of things that kept him from functioning, it only made sense—but the truth still felt like a blade slipped between his ribs. And now he didn’t even have doubt to counter that.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah said, and swiped at her face again. She shifted her feet, looking annoyed at herself for crying, but the tears just continued to fall. “There’s nothing I can say or do to prove it to you, but I’m sorry.”

He forced his head up and when that worked, made himself stand up. His body felt like a marionette as he walked himself to the other doorway, the one opposite Sarah’s. He needed to get out of that room and sleep or try to escape this hurt.

But at the doorway, he stopped. “Thank you,” he said, not looking at Sarah.

Her voice sounded fearful. “For what?”

“For being honest with me.” He pushed open the door and disappeared into his room. He didn’t collapse onto the bed like he wanted to. Instead, he leaned back against the closed door and stared into the darkness. On one of the full-sized beds, Casey turned over in his sleep, but didn’t wake. Chuck stayed where he was.

No matter how much he understood things, it didn’t stop the truth from hurting.

And it wouldn’t, not for a long, long time.

**15 MAY 2008**  
 **EN ROUTE TO DULLES**  
 **21:09 EDT**

Chuck knew that Casey and Sarah were watching him. He did his best to ignore that. They’d watched him, studying him, waiting for him to make some sort of move, all through Charles de Gaulle airport, on the plane stateside. Gwen Davenport had arranged transportation with a group of returning FBI agents, so it was Dr. Bartowski, Mr. Bartowski, Agent Walker, and Major Casey tucked in among what seemed like a bunch of Agent Sandersons and Smiths and Johnsons, and one Agent Lynch. Chuck gave the latter a wide berth.

The FBI agents didn’t talk much. Chuck figured they were all exhausted from whatever conference they’d just attended. Most helped themselves to the wet bar. Chuck drank orange juice, watched the others, and pretended not to notice Casey and Sarah watching him.

He glanced at the open file on Ellie’s tray table. “Prometheus stuff,” she said, without looking up at him. She fiddled with the corner of her reading glasses, and he understood that she was looking at something to do with the Intersect. “Beckman released a bunch of new tests results last week. What with all of the traveling, I hadn’t had a chance to review them yet.”

Chuck looked at the brain scans. “What do they say?”

Ellie moved a shoulder. “That you’re smart. Your preference in card games aside.”

“Ouch.” He forced a laugh. Nerves had settled like an unwelcome brick in his midsection, as they were only an hour from landing. So far, there hadn’t been any signs of interference from the government. Part of him almost wanted to hope that Beckman had fully listened to his demands in a way that she never had before.

He sneaked a look at Sarah and looked down just as quickly.

“Have they uncovered anything interesting? Anything having to do with…”

“There _were_ anomalies. Here.” Ellie scooted over, pulling a scan from the file. That was his brain, Chuck realized, staring at the grainy mass on the print. It looked a bit like their great Aunt Edith’s not-very-appetizing grape salad.

“Your temporal lobe shows these anomalies here and here,” Ellie said, circling two things on the picture with her pen. Chuck could see absolutely no differences, but he also hadn’t sweated through medical school and everything that followed. “At first, we assumed they were to do with the,” her voice dropped, “Intersect, but the Intersect’s more of a visual interface rather than an aural one.”

“So those are Lincoln related,” Chuck said grimly, staring at the red circles.

“We think so. It’s hard to tell. If you’ll look at this one…” Ellie pulled out another scan. “Intersect programming and Lincoln programming, as far as I can tell, work on the same neural pathways. Most of it seems to be stored in the pre-frontal cortex, and it controls the amygdala from there, as far as we can tell. There _was_ a lot of activity when we did our tests a few months ago, but most of the others dismissed that due to the Intersect being new to a human brain.”

“But you think differently?”

“I think it’s all a big jumbled mess, and I need another look at your head, little brother.”

Chuck went still. Getting his brain tested had never been part of his plan in returning. It meant more time with the government, and he didn’t want that.

But before he could say anything, the seat-belt lights blinked and the captain came on over the loudspeaker to let them know they were going into their final descent. All tray tables and loose luggage should be stowed.

“Who’s meeting us at the airport?” Chuck asked, as he adjusted his seatbelt. Across the aisle, Sarah turned the page in her _Sky Mall_. “Devon, right?”

“Yes. He’s rented a minivan so we’ll all fit.”

“Devon with a minivan,” Chuck said, and the image almost made him want to smile. The nerves sitting leaden inside him, however, wouldn’t allow that. He’d glanced at Ellie’s finger the night before: still bare. “Go figure.”

Ellie just gave him a look. Chuck finished his orange juice and handed it to the flight attendant who came around to collect trash, and conversation stopped. He looked out the window, watching the field of light pinpricks against the dark land grow bigger the nearer they drew to D.C. His meeting with Beckman was in less than twelve hours, and it would be, as the saying went, time to face the music.

He felt vaguely like throwing up again. It didn’t help that he hadn’t slept at all, just overturning and revisiting every word he’d said to Sarah, every word Sarah had said to him. His determination, made in the bunker, to stay in control of himself and his surroundings, absolute control, had frayed around the edges. He needed a moment to himself to gather his bearings. He wouldn’t get that moment.

They landed in D.C. Casey led the way through the airport, posture perfectly erect in a way that told Chuck he was treating Dulles like enemy territory. Chuck trailed after him, carrying only his pack. Every step seemed to tighten the knot between his shoulder blades further. So much space, he thought, where the enemy could be hiding, waiting to whisper to him and waiting to control him.

He nudged the cloth “bandage” he kept wrapped around his wrist up, but didn’t look at the symbol still outlined by angry red flesh on his arm. Sarah remained in his peripheral vision, not too close, and he could tell that she remained as watchful as Casey.

What a group they made.

Vigorous waving made the three agents tense, but it was only Devon, wearing cargo shorts and a UCLA shirt. Ellie broke free of the group and ran up to him, laughing. They did one of those swinging-around-in-a-circle hugs that Chuck had only seen in movies.

He felt twin pangs of envy and happiness for his sister. After a second, he pushed himself forward to greet Devon.

Whatever everybody else’s reactions had been, Devon didn’t disappoint him. “Chuck! Hey! You’re back!” He held his hand out for a handshake and pulled Chuck into one of those back-pounding fraternity hug-hybrids. “I’m so glad you’re okay, dude.”

“Good to see you, Devon,” Chuck said, completely honest. He managed to work up a smile.

“Like the fuzz, dude. Very bohemian.” Devon stroked his own stubbled chin. “What do you think, El, would I look—”

“No,” Ellie said, though she was smiling and laughing. “I like you just the way you are, honey.”

Devon spotted the other members of their party. “Sarah! John! Hey!” Hugs were distributed all around. Chuck’s eyes narrowed a bit. Was Devon…nervous? It was hard to tell with his sister’s boyfriend, as Chuck didn’t really think Devon had experienced much apprehension in that ridiculous bubble of handsomeness he called existing, but… “Good flight?” Devon asked.

“It was okay. Apart from the Feebs,” Casey said.

“The whats?”

“We hopped a ride with the FBI,” Sarah said, obviously attempting to sound normal for Devon’s sake. Chuck still heard the tiniest waver in her voice. “Casey’s not really that great at making friends.”

“I make friends just fine, Walker. Excuse me a second.” Casey headed for the men’s room. After a moment, Chuck shrugged and followed. It might be a long drive to the hotel, and he’d had a lot of orange juice on the flight.

He emerged a couple of minutes later to find Sarah standing by herself, next to a gathering crowd. Concern immediately made him want to rush forward, but he checked his movement. He nudged the bandage up another inch. “What’s going on?”

Sarah glanced briefly at him and then away. “You should see for yourself,” she said, her voice cryptic, and jerked her head at the crowd.

Wary, he skirted around until he could get a look at whatever the crowd had gathered to see. His jaw nearly dropped: the crowd had formed a circle around Devon and Ellie. Devon was on one knee. Ellie had both hands over her mouth, her eyes wide as she stared at Devon and the ring box in his hand.

He caught only the tail end. “…do me the honor of marrying me, Eleanor Faye Bartowski?” Devon asked.

“Yes, oh, my God, yes, of course.” Ellie threw herself at Devon as he rose, knocking him back a full step. He only laughed and swung her around, looking very much like his every dream in the world had come true.

Chuck watched, feeling both happy and hollow. A movement at his elbow told him Sarah had joined him. Around them, people clapped and cheered, whistling for the complete strangers they’d just seen get engaged in an international airport. After a moment, Chuck joined in.

His sister was getting married.

“That’s really nice,” Sarah said, surprising Chuck. She wasn’t looking at him, but at Devon and Ellie, who were kissing and laughing. “They deserve some happiness.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said.

“Though if this ends up on the news, Beckman’s going to be pissed.”

“Oh well.”

“Yeah.”

Devon looked over and spotted him, his grin growing even wider. “Chuck! Bro—hey, now I get to mean that literally.”

He pasted on an appropriate smile and hugged first Ellie and then Devon as the crowd began to disperse. The “I’m happy for you” and “This is amazing” was easy to say, at least, as both statements were true. “Though did you really have to wait until I went to the bathroom, Awesome?”

“Dude, it just happened. I looked at her and I knew. I can’t live one more minute without your sister.”

“Ew, don’t go into detail, please. I’m happy for you both.”

“And now that you’re back,” Ellie said, eyes shining, “life can go on.”

Chuck wasn’t so sure about that. But he smiled and nodded and didn’t look at Sarah.


	59. The Lincoln Conspiracy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them, they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight. — _Orison Swett Marden_

**16 MAY 2008  
DOUBLETREE SUITES, ROOM 407  
07:21 EDT**

“Beards are unprofessional,” Casey said for the third time. He removed his oil rag and wiped at an invisible smudge on the gun slide.

Chuck debated the skinny black tie and cast it aside for the silver and blue selection Ellie had packed for him. Skinny ties were probably not worthy for meetings with generals, no matter what ad agencies from the 60s had to say. “Honestly, I was expecting resistance from Ellie and Sarah, not you,” he said as he fitted the tie under his collar.

Casey scowled.

“Plenty of professional men have beards. Riker has a beard. You don’t get more professional than that.”

“Unless that is a real person, Bartowski, your argument is worthless.”

Chuck began tying a Windsor knot. After a couple of days in the same hotel rooms, he and Casey had fallen into a pattern of getting ready in the morning. Casey was cleaning his Sig in the shared living room. Chuck was avoiding looking at his sunken eyes and fighting off the vague, buzzing headache he’d had since February. “What about Abe Lincoln?” Chuck asked. “He had a beard.”

“And look how well that turned out for him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bullet to the head, Bartowski. Bullet to the head.”

“All because he had a beard? Casey, that conspiracy is just—” A knock at the door made both men look over. “—absurd. Who is it?”

“Delivery.” The voice was unfamiliar, and unexpected. Of course the bosses knew where they were staying. Because of that, Chuck had lain awake in the night, waiting for the door to burst open, waiting for the final bullet. When dawn had come, he’d begun to hope again. Now, though, he traded a glance with Casey. He retreated away from the door, finger sliding beneath the bandage on his wrist. He nodded at Casey, once.

Casey opened the door to a man in a generic delivery uniform. Code phrases were exchanged before Casey signed for what seemed to be a garment bag. He closed the door.

“What is it?” Chuck asked, wandering back.

“Orders. Your cover, it looks like.” Casey handed Chuck a file before he set the bag on a hook by the door and unzipped it. Both men stared at the contents.

“What the hell?” Chuck asked.

Casey’s smirk spread. “Hope you weren’t too attached to that beard, Bartowski.”

**16 MAY 2008  
DOUBLETREE SUITES LOBBY  
07:58 EDT**

Chuck rubbed a hand over the quarter inch of hair left on his scalp and resisted the urge to scowl only because he had a feeling that once he started, his face might very well freeze that way. He’d been letting his hair grow throughout his time in the bunker, another small form of defiance (though part of it was honest neglect from being on the run). To have it right back to where he started—bald as a new recruit—burned. In addition, he’d liked the beard. He’d liked the beard a lot. His entire face still tingled from the aftershave.

“You’re sure it’s even?” he asked Casey.

“You’re bald. Does it matter?”

“I’m not bald. There is still some hair there.” Ideally, Chuck would have liked his hairstyle to be high and tight rather than the full “Buddha.” But there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it now, not when he was standing in the hotel lobby in Class As. The NSA had sent him an Army uniform as his cover. This had to be somebody’s idea of a joke—though he had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t.

“Quit messing with your hair, Bartowski.”

“I thought you said I was bald.”

“I did. Either way, quit it. This is a briefing, not a date.”

Before Chuck reply, Sarah and Ellie came around the corner, both wearing skirts and suit jackets. They both pulled up short.

Sarah blinked. “What the—”

Ellie, however, frowned. “Chuck?” she asked, as though Chuck had transplanted his head onto somebody else’s body. She gave him a once-over. Sarah, on the other hand, shut her mouth, her face falling into that polite mask she’d worn since Moscow. “What’s going on? Why are you wearing that? You got out of the Army years ago.”

“It’s my cover.”

Sarah frowned at the rank. “Lieutenant?”

“ Lieutenant,” Casey said. “No butter-bars here.”

“Yes, I can see that, Casey. Thank you. Wouldn’t you at least be a Captain by now?”

“Search me. I was only in the Army for a couple of months.” When Chuck went to put his hands in his pockets, Casey slapped the hand nearest him. Chuck clenched his fist to keep from snapping at Casey. He saw Sarah’s eyes flick down, catching the movement. “Are we ready to get this show on the road?”

“Almost. Hold on a second.” Ellie put a hand on his arm—Chuck flinched—and drew him away from the spies. “Chuck, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Chuck laughed, his voice hollow. “No,” he said, and Ellie’s eyebrows shot up. “No, I don’t have the first clue. Not really.”

“Oh.”

“But maybe that’s okay. No plan survives first contact with reality,” Chuck said, and shifted his cover from under one arm to the other. Holy crap. He was going to have to remember to salute officers. This day really was going to be hell. “But we’ve come too far for doubts.”

Ellie smiled at that, though the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “Right.”

They were quiet as Casey drove them to Fort Meade. Sarah rode shotgun and for a moment, Chuck imagined they were actually a chuck wagon, heading west, Casey at the reins, Sarah spotting any trouble from the bench next to him, Chuck and Ellie waiting inside for that trouble to befall them. It was a ridiculous thought to ponder while they muscled through Virginia’s rush hour, Chuck had to admit. He didn’t voice it; instead, he let the classic rock (Casey’s selection) roll over the car and watched Sarah out of the corner of his eye. She hadn’t slept either, it looked like.

They arrived at Fort Meade earlier than Chuck had anticipated. Foolish on his part to think they’d be late, as Casey’s D.C. Crown Vic could intimidate even the rush hour drivers, but Chuck still frowned at his watch as he climbed from the backseat. Casey steered him toward the entrance, Sarah and Ellie trailing behind them. “That’s a Major, Bartowski. Don’t you dare screw up now.”

His salute was more than a little rusty, and he felt sick to his stomach, but Chuck managed to receive a brusque nod from a passing Air Force major after they’d exchanged salutes. Sweat leaked down his back. Why the hell couldn’t his cover have involved wearing civvies? Or not being at the NSA headquarters at all, come to think of it?

At the entranceway, they were required to hand over their identification—and in Chuck’s case, the paper copy of his orders—to the guards working the metal detectors by the door. Sarah and Casey were ushered through a special line; Chuck and Ellie went through the metal detector, Chuck grimacing when his various medals tripped it off. The others watched him from a few feet away while the guard waved a wand over him to make sure he wasn’t packing.

Chuck suffered the indignity with a sigh—a sigh that died abruptly when he turned and saw the MPs heading from a hallway. He could see the others tense as the leader skirted around them, heading for Chuck.

Chuck backed up a step before training kicked in and saluted, automatically. Captain Forster returned the salute, his eyes hard. “Lieutenant Bartowski?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Please place your hands on your head.”

“I—what?” Chuck blinked at the officer.

Sarah ignored the M16s dangling at the MPs’ backs and stepped between Forster and Chuck. “What’s going on, gentlemen?” she asked, her voice deathly quiet.

“Ma’am, this is no concern of yours.”

“I highly doubt that.” Sarah flashed her badge.

“With all due respect, ma’am, I receive my orders from a much higher authority than you.” 

“Whose orders?” This came not from Sarah, but from Casey.

“I am to bring the rest of you as well, but Lieutenant Bartowski is a security threat. I have orders to deal with the threat. Lieutenant Bartowski, hands on your head.”

Chuck’s heart began to jackhammer. He’d scoped out the exits, of course, when he’d been pushed through the entrance line, but now they all seemed twice the distance, and those M16s strapped to the soldiers seemed much, much scarier. He’d walked right into a trap, wearing the bait uniform and all.

“Lieutenant Charles Bartowski, I am hereby placing you under arrest for being absent without leave. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”

“What the hell is this?” Ellie demanded, surging forward. “He’s not actually in the Army, you idiots!”

“Ellie, it’s okay,” Chuck said, though his heart thumped harder and his throat felt like sandpaper. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Gwen was supposed to be here to stop this. She had promised.

Had she betrayed him? What was going on?

“Lieutenant Bartowski, do you understand?” 

Chuck swallowed. “I understand.”

“I’m going to need you to back up, ma’am,” Forster told Sarah.

She didn’t budge. With a shrug, Forster moved around her and strong-armed Chuck into cuffs. The instant the metal snapped around his wrist, impossibly cold, the room shrank, going from a massive hall to a small cell. Black began to descend on the edges of his vision. He gulped in oxygen, faster and faster, as there wasn’t enough air, would never be enough air, all of the air was rapidly leaving. His shoulders and chest began to heave.

He had not anticipated that Beckman would betray them so badly, or that Gwen wouldn’t be there to back him up. He’d thought Beckman to be an ally of sorts, even with her questionable morals. He was an utter moron. Casey was right about that much. He should never have come back. And now Sarah was going to karate chop a bunch of MPs into oblivion and they would be forced to go on the run _yet again_ and he was _so_ tired of running. Oxygen dwindled. His body forgot how to breathe.

The black went from a vignette to full night. Chuck jerked away, trying to fight the restraints, trying to see his wrist—he had to flash, he couldn’t lose control—but an iron grip held him steady. He struggled harder, almost oblivious to the sound of cursing that punctuated his thoughts. Whether it was him cursing, or Sarah or even Forster, he didn’t know.

His wrist. He was vulnerable and he had to see his wrist. Chuck twisted, desperately trying to push aside the jury-rigged bandage with his thumb.

“ _Chuck_.” Sarah’s voice cut through the black. Chuck blinked and his eyes worked again, though he could hardly see anything through the black and white sparks that made everything distant and hazy. He was standing, he realized, on his own two feet, and his hands were no longer cuffed behind his back. “Chuck, can you hear me?”

Chuck blinked harder, but the sparks didn’t recede. In fact, he felt dizzy, dizzier than he had in a long time. “I…” The word came out as a croak. “I think I need to sit.”

“Grab my arm.”

“Where’s Fors—what’s going on?” His vision was finally beginning to return.

“What else? Forster’s getting chewed out by the mighty Davenport. C’mon, this way. We’ll take it slow.” Sarah, after grabbing his hand and wrapping it around her arm, began to pull him. Since his vision was slowly returning, he could see a bench off against the wall, to the side. Sarah pushed him onto this. He felt himself sway in response. “Still with me?”

“I—I think so. What happened?”

“Power play.” Sarah sounded disgusted. “You okay?”

“I will be.”

“Stay here for a second. Don’t move.”

He heard her heels clicking as she walked away, though he could see little more than a blurry shape.

It only took Ellie only a few seconds to join him, and Sarah didn’t return. His vision had cleared well enough for him to recognize his sister without any trouble as she rushed up to him. “Chuck! Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m dizzy,” Chuck said, completely honest. His head felt as though it had been stuffed with cotton balls and tossed on a Tilt-a-Whirl. And his hand was still warm from Sarah’s arm, but that was completely unrelated. “What happened? Did I pass out? What’s going on?”

“You went catatonic, as far as I can tell. I want to check your pulse.” Ellie checked his pulse, timing it against her watch. Her frown grew at whatever she felt, but she didn’t comment and instead pulled out a pen-light. Chuck flinched away as she shone that directly in his eyes. “Hold still.”

“Ow, Ellie. A little warning.”

“Your pupils aren’t reacting very quickly. Do you feel like you’re going to throw up?”

Chuck shook his head, and regretted that when it made the world shudder. “No,” he said. “Just dizzy. It’ll pass.”

“You have fits like this often?”

“Not since Barcelona.”

“I need to get you to a hospital.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not, you’re going into catatonic fits. That’s a sign that things are not fine. And we need to get out of here as soon as possible and—oh, great.” Ellie scowled. “No, no, don’t stand—stay sitt—god, you don’t even listen to me. Why do I bother?”

Chuck, however, had enough military training to know to rise when in the presence of officers. Casey and Captain Forster came over, neither of them looking pleased to be in the other’s company. Or perhaps they weren’t thrilled to be in the company of FBI Special Agent Gwen Davenport, who accompanied them, her face like a thundercloud.

“Agent Davenport,” Chuck said, staggering only a little as he gained his footing. Ellie immediately popped up beside him to provide support.

“You know it’s Gwen, Chuck. Are you okay? Agent Walker tells me you had an episode after this…” She sized Captain Forster up, distastefully. “Officer attempted to arrest you?”

“I’m fine, ma’am. What’s going on?”

“I was running a little late, and the CIA decided to crash our little party. They brought Captain Forster with them.”

“Ma’am, I had my orders—”

“We’ll just see about that.” Gwen turned to Chuck. “Are you well? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“Yes, he—”

“I’m fine,” Chuck said, cutting Ellie off. She glared at him. “I just want to get this over with. Is the CIA going to be a problem?”

“Aren’t they always?” Casey muttered.

Since Sarah was across the room, talking into her cell phone and looking none too happy about any of it, nobody contradicted him. Chuck almost did, as a show of solidarity.

Forster looked pained. “I was following orders.”

“I’m sure you were. Now you have new orders. Chuck, in or out?”

Chuck looked from Ellie to Gwen even to Sarah, still across the room. “Let’s just get this over with. We should be okay, assuming they don’t try to arrest me again.”

Forster glowered at him in a way that seemed to offer no promises on that front. Great, Chuck thought. I’ve made an enemy at the NSA headquarters. “If that is how Agent Davenport,” and Forster’s voice told the assembled party exactly how he felt about the FBI agent, “wants to play it, very well. My new orders are to escort you to the meeting room, Lieutenant. Follow me.”

He still felt a little too unsteady to walk properly, and he felt Ellie beside him the entire time, eyeing him, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Sarah rejoined their group, seeming to deliberately keep as much distance between herself and Gwen as possible. Perhaps, Chuck thought as he was led through familiar and unfamiliar hallways in the building, Sarah could bond with Forster over that.

“Here we are,” Forster said once they’d reached the meeting room. He started to lead the way.

“I think you’ve come far enough, Captain,” Gwen said.

How Forster could stay at attention and glare, Chuck didn’t know, but the man managed it. “Yes, ma’am.”

“In fact, you’re dismissed.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Forster said, his voice stiff. He left, the assembled Prometheus members and Gwen watching him go.

“Well, he was a bucket of sunshine,” Chuck said, wondering if the others would worry should he lean against the wall to fortify himself. In addition to being dizzy, he was now feeling a bit ill, unsurprisingly: his stomach had tied itself into a series of rather intricate knots. He clenched his right fist, hoping to soothe the nerves away, but only served to intensify the knots. “And now for the firing squad.”

“Chin up, Bartowski. I hear a bullet to the head is very quick without the beard,” Casey said, and led the way into the briefing room.

Sarah rolled her eyes at him as she followed, with Ellie not far behind. Before Chuck could bring up the rear of their little group, Gwen put a hand on his arm. “We’ll have time to talk,” she said, “after this briefing. I’ve requested it. But first, how are you?”

Chuck looked at her, soberly. “The government turned me into a monster and then tried to arrest me. I’m just peachy.”

“Well, you have people on your side. Don’t forget that.” Gwen patted his arm, like a maternal aunt, and gestured that he should lead the way into the briefing room. He took a deep breath before he did so and, legs still a bit unsteady beneath him, headed inside.

Beckman was waiting, as he figured she probably would be, stern expression in place. Instead of the myriad of expressions he’d imagine he’d see, she merely looked prim. She gave him a nod as he entered—and did a double take. “Mr. Bartowski, _what_ are you wearing?”

Chuck dropped his salute. “I…what? The NSA sent this to my hotel room this morning.” He looked down at the uniform.

“I can assure you, the NSA did no such thing. Major Casey, do you know the meaning of this?”

“General, I’m not sure that—”

“I can explain,” said a much deeper voice.

The temperature of the room dropped fifty degrees; CIA Director Langston Graham strode in as though he owned the place, which was ridiculous because he was CIA and this was NSA, and the CIA had _not_ been invited to this meeting.

A spike of fear and adrenaline drove right through Chuck’s stomach. He stared in horror as it occurred to him that the two people on the planet able to turn him into a mindless killing machine were now in the same room.

He felt the entire room tilt. This time, though, the hand that grabbed his arm belonged to Gwen. “What is the meaning of this?” Her voice cut through the brief haze that had descended over Chuck’s vision. “I thought I made my terms clear.”

“You did,” Beckman said, giving Graham a displeased look. “I assure you, Agent Davenport, I did not arrange this.”

“That’s the problem with running a company full of spies, General,” Graham said, his voice laconic as he took his usual seat at the table for the briefing. “We have this tendency to spy. Makes us a downright nuisance, I think.”

Gwen’s grip on Chuck’s arm tightened.

“This meeting is over,” she said. “I’ll not have Mr. Bartowski subjected to the threat of that man’s company. Chuck, we’re leaving.”

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” Graham said.

Gwen’s furious look could wreck entire civilizations. “And why is that, Director?”

“Because the minute Bartowski steps out that door, Captain Forster will arrest him.” Graham’s teeth showed white against his dark skin. Chuck felt his hands begin to shake. “For real this time.”

“Arrest him for _what_ , precisely?”

“Being AWOL.”

“That’s downright absurd. Mr. Bartowski has been freed from his—”

“Has he?” Graham reached into his coat and pulled out a file folded in half. He dropped it on the table between himself and Gwen. The lawyer didn’t look at Chuck as she let go of his arm to pick up the sheet. A few seconds later, her brow furrowed and an even scarier scowl took the place of the first. “So you can see, Agent Davenport, Captain Forster is perfectly within his rights to arrest Lieutenant Bartowski. Just like I’m allowed to be present for this top-secret meeting, as the man never left my employ.”

“What is he talking about?” Chuck asked, swallowing hard. It was hard to make anything out over the way his heart was pounding, but even a deaf man could hear the smug superiority and calm assurance in Graham’s voice.

Gwen, on the other hand, had begun to vibrate with anger. “According to this,” she said without looking at Chuck, “you’re being considered an Active Duty member of the Army, and can be arrested for being absent without leave.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Ellie said. “There’s no way you can make that stick in any court, not after what you did to Chuck!”

Graham merely raised an amused eyebrow at the elder Bartowski. Bad idea, Chuck thought. Ellie might not get combative much, but being a smartass was definitely one way to set her off. He knew this firsthand; he’d lived through being a teenager. Indeed, Ellie opened her mouth to retort, but Sarah, of all people, quelled her with a look.

“Of course,” Graham said, “I could be persuaded to work around this.”

“Dr. Bartowski is right,” Gwen said. “There’s no way you’d make this stick in any court of law.”

“Perhaps. But these things do take time to arrive at court, and until then, Lieutenant Bartowski would remain in custody…and who knows what he might hear?” Graham turned and calmly looked at Chuck.

Fear turned Chuck’s bowels to water. His hands, already shaking, trembled harder, but thankfully, black didn’t descend upon his vision. Slime merely coated the inside of his stomach. This was all a mistake. He shouldn’t have left the bunker. He should have stayed where it was safe, he should never have believed that Gwen could protect him against the bosses.

His thumb nudged at the bandage on his wrist, an automatic reflex, and the move drove the fear back enough that he started breathing again.

He’d taken measures to protect himself and everybody around him. He couldn’t forget that.

“However,” Graham continued, looking away from Chuck, his gaze sweeping over the assembled party, all of whom seemed to be tensed for battle, “I am, of course, willing to overlook this little jaunt of the Lieutenant’s. In fact, he had several months of paid leave accrued. We could call it even.”

“How magnanimous of you,” Gwen said. “What is it you’d possibly want in return for such a blessing?”

“Merely to attend this meeting.” Graham’s smile was pure charm.

Gwen glanced at Chuck. He avoided looking down at his wrist on principle; it wouldn’t do to tip his ace in the hole to the bosses. Even so, the tattoos were there. They would fortify him.

“If he wants to stay, let him,” he said, his voice surprisingly steady. “My business today is with General Beckman.”

“Is it,” Graham said, smiling politely.

The woman in question rolled her eyes. “Are you quite through?” she asked, and Chuck understood in that moment just why she was the one with stars on her shoulders and nobody else. “Because I’d like to get this little joke moving now, if all of the drama has passed?”

“Certainly, General,” Gwen said, and pulled out a chair at the table. This was enough of a cue for Sarah and Casey to take their seats, Sarah keeping her gaze fixed on the table in front of her. Ellie shot Chuck a bewildered look before she followed in suit. “Thank you for taking the time to meet with us.”

“My pleasure,” Beckman said in a tone that told them it was anything but. “Nice to see you’ve come out of your hole, Bartowski.”

Chuck didn’t know what to say to that, so he chose to say nothing.

Casey didn’t seem to have the same problem. “Took you long enough,” he said under his breath.

Chuck gave him a dirty look.

“I don’t wish to beat around the bush here,” Beckman went on. “But it’s come to light that the CIA and the NSA have much different definitions of the term ‘inter-departmental transparency.’ Which is, to put it frankly, a pain in my ass.”

“What happened to Bartowski had nothing to do with the Intersect,” Graham said easily. “Therefore it wasn’t any of the NSA’s business. I can’t possibly think of any reason you might have wanted to know.”

“Imagine that,” Beckman said, her voice so dry it put the Sahara to shame. “Not wanting to know whether or not our most valuable secrets had been put into the head of a man conditioned to receive orders like a trained dog. I can’t possibly think why we would want to know that.”

Chuck flinched.

“Trained dog?” Ellie asked, her fists clenching on the tabletop.

“I see no point in pleasantries, Dr. Bartowski. The fact of the matter is that Bartowski is mentally compromised in a way that makes him a danger to society and especially to the Intersect.”

“And whose fault is that?” Ellie asked.

Beckman glared at Graham. “Precisely,” she said, “what the NSA might have appreciated knowing about—from the relevant parties—when the Intersect was put it into the head of a sleeper assassin.”

Chuck flinched again.

“From _any_ of the relevant parties,” Beckman said, staring directly at Sarah.

She merely gave the General a cool look.

“Obviously, we can’t go on like this. Mr. Bartowski presents a danger to both himself and those around him.”

“Through no fault of his own,” Gwen said.

Beckman rolled her eyes. “I highly doubt Bartowski had no knowledge of what he was getting into when he volunteered for Lincoln.”

“If he volunteered at all,” Sarah said. Graham narrowed his eyes at her.

The others all turned to look at Chuck. He felt a single bead of sweat leak down the collar of his uniform shirt. Had he been forced? Or had he volunteered when they’d found him unfit for Omaha because of Bryce’s machinations? Bryce—he couldn’t think about his friend without wanting to hit something, so he took a deep breath and pushed it away. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said, hoping that he sounded calm. “I don’t remember.”

“Volunteer or not, it doesn’t matter. What happened to my client is an atrocity against humanity,” Gwen said.

“And he’ll be handsomely recompensed,” Graham said. “Make no mistake of that.”

Beckman did not look pleased.

“But of course,” Graham said, “there are other matters to consider.”

“What other matters?” Gwen asked.

“Lieutenant Bartowski presents, as my colleague pointed out, a danger to society. We simply can’t allow for that to pass.”

“We all know who’s to blame for that!”

“It doesn’t change the fact that it’s true, and that Bartowski is a threat and needs to be treated accordingly. I can’t, in good conscience, let Bartowski loose in society.”

“Why ever not?” Beckman asked, turning waspish now. “You didn’t seem to have a problem with this before.”

Graham merely smiled; Chuck felt a surprisingly strong hatred begin to form deep in his midsection. He’d never hated anybody, he thought. No, that wasn’t fair. He’d hated George Fleming, his professor, for years. He’d hated him with such intensity that it had made him uncomfortable. And now that he’d had time to think about that, he knew that hatred had really been aimed at Dr. Carver, the man who’d driven him insane over two years and programmed him to forget all of it. But since the conditioning hadn’t allowed Chuck animosity toward his handlers, he’d channeled that to the one man he figured could take the heat. 

Even misplaced, the hatred had burned strong, but it had nothing on the inferno of rage he felt toward Langston Graham now. It robbed him of the capability to speak; he sat, silent and rigid, staring at the man who had signed off on Omaha and its dirtier younger brother, Lincoln. He could feel his heart beating, since the blood was still rushing to his face, but otherwise, he might as well have been a statue, stuck there, glaring.

He felt Sarah look at him, side-long. It did nothing to bank any of the fury.

“So there would, of course, have to be provisions made.”

“My client is under no obligation to bow to any of your demands, Director.”

“He does if he wants the money we all know he came here for.”

How did Graham do that? How was he so blithe, so unfeeling about the fact that he’d ruined Chuck forever? Did human lives mean so little to him? Most of the men and women involved in Lincoln and Omaha had died thanks to the fact that the government had literally loosed a mad scientist on them. The few that remained had been left to rot in mental institutions and bunkers—though Chuck’s research had freed most of them in the past three months. Did Graham simply not have a conscience about all of the lives he’d ruined?

Gwen scowled. “I think this meeting is over.”

“I wouldn’t leave, if I were you.”

“No? We’ve met your demands; you’ve attended this meeting, we’ve heard you out. Now, Mr. Bartowski and I will be walking out of this building without fear of arrest. An arrest I highly doubt you could ever make stick, I might add.”

Graham stared at her, seemingly unaffected. Gwen glared back. The smash of a fist hitting a glass tabletop, however, made even the hardened spies in the room jump.

As one, they all looked at Beckman.

“Are you all _quite_ finished?” she said. “Because if you’d like to sit around here all day bickering, that’s perfectly fine, but I have other, much more valuable things to do with my time.”

Her gaze moved over each of them in turn. Chuck felt the urge to mumble “Yes, General” along with Casey like a schoolboy caught passing notes. Even Sarah looked down at the table at that.

“As grateful as we all are,” Beckman went on in exactly the same tone of voice as before, “that Mr. Bartowski has graced us with his presence, there is still a lot we need to discuss and sort out, and I’d like to get on with it.” Without any ceremony, she picked up two folders and dropped them in front of Chuck and Gwen. “This is what the NSA and the CIA are prepared to do for you, Chuck. There are stipulations, but then, you can’t deny you were expecting that. I’d like to cut the fanfare and let you talk about them with your lawyer. You can give me your answer in the morning.”

“That’s it?” Chuck asked, picking up the file. “All of this…for that?”

“There might have been more, but my patience with idiots has sorely been tested. Think hard about this offer. It might be the only one you receive. Now that we’ve cleared that order of business, I want to know precisely what happened the night of February fourth that led you back to that godforsaken bunker. Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”

Chuck swallowed hard.

**16 MAY 2008  
FT. MEADE  
16:07 EDT**

Chuck let his weary body sink into the chair and, ignoring Casey’s stink-eye, unbuttoned his dress jacket, pulling it off with a defiant look. He tossed it over the back of the chair.

It was all such a damn farce.

Casey, though, didn’t say anything. Granted, he’d already removed his own suit jacket an hour before—it lay over the back of their meeting room’s small sofa, discarded so that Casey could roll his sleeves up to the elbows, cross his arms over his chest, and scowl at the door. Even Sarah had buttoned down some, though she’d merely kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet under her.

Ellie had left to call Devon—her fiancé, Chuck thought. Ellie was getting married, and Devon had waited until Chuck had returned to propose. They’d want him to be in the wedding, Chuck realized with a sinking stomach. Which meant more exposure, more people. He rubbed his hands over his face; Sarah’s eyes flicked toward him, obviously catching the movement, though she looked down.

To Chuck’s left, Gwen didn’t look up. She was still poring over the contract Beckman had given them. She’d filled up two pages of lined yellow legal paper and from the way her pen was flying over the page, would likely fill up several more before she reached the end. Chuck had attempted to look through his own copy, but so many heretofores and aforementioneds and even _res ipsa loquitur_ had stood out to him and made his head swim. The scant amount of sleep he’d had the night before hadn’t helped.

“Doing okay?” Sarah asked when Chuck scowled at the contract. 

“Yeah,” he said, though he felt hollow. The adrenaline spike after seeing Graham had tired him out more than anything else. “Did you know he was going to be there?”

Sarah shook her head. “Bastard,” was all she said of Graham, and the subject dropped.

Casey snorted, making them both look over at him. “Really, Bartowski?” he asked. “Monks?”

Casey was only getting to that point now? His briefing, where he’d confessed to fleeing to Europe, then Asia, and finally Siberia, had been over an hour before. “What of it?” 

“That’s a kung fu movie cliché. Everybody knows that. And yet you tried to go study with monks anyway?”

“I thought they would help me find my inner calm,” Chuck said, feeling defensive.

Casey looked skeptical. “And did they?”

“They…” Chuck looked down. “They wouldn’t talk to me. It didn’t help that I didn’t speak whatever it was they spoke—I couldn’t tell what it was. And they didn’t speak English. So I left. And before I realized it, I was in Moscow. The next step only seemed logical.”

“You’re a moron,” Casey said, rolling his eyes.

“Casey,” Sarah said.

“What? He is.”

“You could try being a little nicer.”

“I’m calling it like I see it.”

“It’s all right, Casey. I missed you, too,” Chuck said.

Casey gave a mild grunt at that, but didn’t glare at Chuck. Oddly enough, Casey’s putdowns helped normalize things far better than Chuck expected. To think he’d been apprehensive about seeing Casey again due to the scorn, only to find comfort in the very same thing he’d dreaded. He really was a contrary being.

Gwen shushed them as she turned the page. Chuck loosened his tie.

When Ellie returned, she was carrying Chinese food, which had been sent up by General Beckman’s aide. “Nice man,” she said with a shrug. “Seemed a bit afraid of his boss.”

“Wonder why,” Chuck said, and Gwen shushed them again.

It was awhile before Gwen finally turned to the last page of the contract and sighed. She rubbed at her neck, looking uncomfortable. “Remind me,” she said, “to take the NSA’s lawyers out back and shoot them, if I ever get a chance.”

“Should you really say that right now?”

“What do you mean? Idiot pissants, every single one of them.”

Chuck’s stomach dropped; whatever Gwen had read in the contract hadn’t been good.

But she just rolled her shoulders. “Can’t write a contract to save their lives. I haven’t seen such dense language since that indemnity clause in the parachute purchase contract. I think it was translated from Czech.”

“I…what?” Chuck asked.

“Simply put, Chuck, Graham’s posturing today was a bunch of blustering. Uncle Sam knows he screwed up, and he’s willing to pay you, handsomely, for your silence. Actually, he’s willing to pay all of you handsomely for your silence, as far as I can tell from this contract. Seems the higher-ups don’t really want it getting out that they’ve unleashed a bunch of Manchurian candidates on the world.”

“Yeah, that can’t be good for PR,” Sarah said, frowning.

“Just how handsomely?” Ellie asked.

“Well, the tune this contract is whistling is ten million, give or take, but from the language, I expect they’ll be offering you all contracts with similar—if reduced—numbers. I imagine your reps will be—Chuck, are you all right?”

Chuck choked. “Te-ten _million_?”

Gwen blinked at him. “Oh, right, I suppose that’s probably a big deal. Yes. They want to pay you ten million for your silence, but there are some parts of this contract that I don’t like.”

“Hold on,” Chuck said, and coughed. Ten million dollars, his brain told him. The government wanted to give him ten million dollars. It seemed like an impossibly big number, like…well, ten million _anything_. His brain literally could not process that, though, absurdly, an image of Scrooge McDuck leaping into a swimming pool full of gold bullion and coins and jewels and—ten _million_ dollars. “I…I think I need a drink.”

“Bartowski’s going to be a millionaire?” Casey asked, looking dubious. He cast his eyes to the ceiling. “Lord help us all.”

“There’s a catch,” Gwen said.

Chuck, Ellie, Sarah, and Casey all went still. “Of course there is,” Ellie said for all of them, and sighed. “What is it?”

Gwen told them.


	60. Rock Bottom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, - but it returneth. — _Percy Bysshe Shelley_

**12 JUNE 2008  
BACHELOR PAD 2.0  
15:38 EDT**

Chuck stepped inside the apartment he and Casey were sharing and immediately felt a new coat of sweat drench him, going over the first coat already in place. For once, it wasn’t agoraphobia—another Lincoln instinct, they’d discovered, that could be turned on and off like a faucet, as who wanted their “on hold bunker assassins” to suffer from a debilitating mental illness when they could be out garroting dictators?—but rather genuine heat and humidity making him sweat. Maryland in June was the equivalent of a swamp. His California blood ultimately preferred, he’d discovered, dry heat and nothing else.

He ripped out his earphones and tossed his iPod on the table. Taking a walk after his appointment had been a bad idea, no matter how much he’d needed it. “Damn it, Casey. Is air conditioning too modern for your Cold War sensibilities or something?”

Casey, sitting at the dining room table in their modest kitchen, a glass of lemonade in front of him, didn’t even look up from _Modern Sniper_. “Waste of money. Weather’s nice.”

“For hell,” Chuck said, and stalked to the thermostat.

Casey flicked the magazine to the next page. “Go figure,” he said. “Bartowski’s cranky again.”

“Being boiled alive tends to get me in a mood.”

“Spend a week in Afghanistan in July and then you can talk to me about being boiled alive.”

“Pass.” Thermostat adjusted, Chuck moved to the fridge and poured himself a glass of water. He gulped it down as he loosened his tie, and then refilled the glass from the pitcher. His walk really hadn’t done a thing, he thought. He was still unsettled and vaguely angry in that way he always seemed to be lately, and couldn’t control.

Behind him, Casey cleared his throat. “I see the meeting with the shrink went well.”

Chuck said nothing.

“And your sister dragging you to the hospital definitely cheered you up, I can see.”

“My knee’s fine, if that’s what you’re getting at. But we’ll be adding physical therapy to our list of weekly appointments.”

“Oh, goodie.” Casey dog-eared a page and kept going as Chuck sat down at the table. “Just what I wanted. More time around you and the happy couple.”

“In their milieu, too. Don’t forget that.” Devon had transferred to the same hospital where Chuck would be attending physical therapy for his knee, which meant that Ellie would be tagging along with Chuck for those visits when she wasn’t busy at the same hospital, studying Chuck’s brain.

Casey looked up from the magazine with a sour expression in place. “Maybe Walker can handle those appointments.”

“No, she says she already drives me to one kind of therapy. This one is all you.”

Casey considered it. “I’ll allow it,” he said.

Chuck snorted, and only shrugged, completely unrepentant, when Casey glared at him. They all knew who truly gave the orders on the team, and it wasn’t any of the men.

Casey’s face settled into a mutinous scowl. “So that’s why you’re cranky,” he said, returning to his magazine. “Your biweekly awkward silence session with Walker went well.”

He couldn’t deny it, though he wanted to. Ever since it had been decided which guard duties each agent took (Casey lived with Chuck, Sarah drove him around), Chuck had dreaded therapy appointments. Today had proved him right. Sarah had made chitchat— _chitchat_ of all things, about the weather, Ellie’s wedding, even the Orioles—all the way to and from Chuck’s therapy appointment, like they were virtual strangers, stuck in a car together. Like Sarah was actually his bodyguard in anything more than name. Like they were…nothing. It hurt, a dull ache that never seemed to leave and that he could never seem to do anything about. It had no sharp points and still hurt interminably. Even worse, he’d found he actually wanted to talk about it during his therapy sessions, but he never seemed to find words to describe it, leaving him without options.

Sarah wouldn’t look directly at him anymore.

“No,” Chuck said, a blatant lie. “I’m cranky because the air is soup outside and a furnace inside. Why can’t we be civilized?”

“Waste of money.”

“Then they can bill me. God knows I’m rich enough.” Chuck set his empty glass in the sink and went upstairs.

He _was_ rich. Filthy rich. Richer than Midas. Money leaking out of his ears, even, however the saying went. It just didn’t feel like it when he was living in a three-bedroom apartment in the greater D.C. area with his very own NSA bodyguard, but that didn’t change things. Gwen had argued furiously on his behalf, so furiously that ten million had become 11.2 million. Of course, in concession, Chuck had to bow and scrape to the government’s will for what they predicted to be six months longer: bodyguards, therapy, occasional missions as the only working Intersect while the government put a new Intersect into rotation. Also, they wanted to study both the Lincoln and Intersect parts of his brain, so Ellie would be leading that team.

Even though he’d personally seen his bank account statement, he couldn’t help but feel that they were right back at square one. Even the therapy had reset itself. Chuck sat for three session a week with Dr. Evelyn Johnson, who was working with all of the ex-Lincoln subjects freed from their bunkers. For bodyguards, he had Sarah and Casey. For brain science—and general medical nagging—he had Ellie. All they needed to do was transplant Morgan from Los Angeles to the eastern seaboard and it would be hail, hail, the gang’s all here, he thought.

He glanced at his computer as he walked by the den, where his RPGs mingled with Casey’s first person shooters. Morgan might be online and up for a couple rounds of gaming, but Chuck wasn’t feeling up to it. He wasn’t feeling up to much of anything lately, actually. In fact, lying spread-eagled on his bed and staring at the ceiling seemed like a worthy pastime at the moment.

He took a shower first. It dropped the temperature from broiling to sauna. Wearing gym shorts and a Patriots shirt—his clothing had been picked rather haphazardly, as he simply didn’t give a damn—he collapsed onto his bed, rolled over, and stared at the ceiling. He willed time to pass faster, though he had no idea why. It didn’t mean anything.

Nothing meant anything anymore.

Dr. Johnson said he was making progress. No more catatonic fits, at least. He still flinched at open spaces, and he couldn’t think about Sarah without feeling a swirl of hurt and confusion and a thousand other unidentifiable emotions, each as complex as the next. Of course, he’d started waking up on the floor of his bedroom or even standing in the kitchen, which freaked him out more than he wanted to admit. Even though he’d sleepwalked as a child, could it be the Lincoln programming? He’d figured out through careful thought in the bunker that his first instincts would always be Lincoln-enforced: reach for the weapon, case the room, attack the attacker. Could Lincoln be taking over his mind in sleep as well?

No. He’d woken up in front of the fridge. He’d sleepwalked as a kid. It probably didn’t mean anything.

Progress. Chuck snorted again. Yeah, right.

Casey appeared in the doorway. “Dominos or Chinese?”

“I take it the ladies and Awesome aren’t joining us tonight, then.”

“Nope.”

“Chinese. Extra wontons.” Chuck never looked away from the ceiling. “Thank you.”

“Welcome.” Casey disappeared.

Ellie was happy, Chuck reminded himself. Sure, she was pissed off beyond all reasoning on his behalf, and she had let everybody know it. But she was also leading a team of researchers to get to the bottom of how his brain worked. The Intersect, to her, was something fascinating, the next step of human evolution. So no matter how disgusted she was by the things it and its predecessors—for the Intersect and Lincoln had to be related—had done to Chuck, she couldn’t help but try and solve the mystery.

“We’ll get it out of your head and then you can shrug off the bullshit once and for all,” had been how she’d put it to Chuck over coffee the week before.

Chuck didn’t ask her how she felt about the fact that her research was clearly helping the government build a new Intersect. He imagined she felt torn. After all, the minute the Intersect was uploaded into anybody else, Chuck was free to go build that house in the mountains he’d told Sarah about. He’d still have to wear some kind of tracking device beyond that point in case somebody tried to use a Lincoln phrase on him or the Lincoln programming took over, but he’d be free, in a way.

He rolled over onto his side and put his feet on the floor. Freedom. Not something he’d ever really have. Not while he had the Intersect, or Lincoln. But he did have wontons coming, so he headed downstairs to watch the Fox News Network with Casey and spend another night turning his brain off.

**21 JUNE 2008  
ST. LUCY’S HOSPITAL  
11:17 EDT**

“Well, this is your brain,” Ellie said, pointing at a chart, “and this is your brain on drugs.”

“Very funny,” Chuck said.

“Oh, c’mon, I’ve always wanted to say that.” Ellie sat down on the one spinning stool her office—or at least the office she’d appropriated by using her NSA credentials—contained and looked up at Chuck. Due to lack of seating, he’d taken up residence on the examination table, the tissue crackling beneath him. He’d dropped by for physical therapy on his knee, which meant that everything, not just his knee, ached, so he was hardly in the mood. “And it’s true. That is your brain on drugs.”

Chuck stared at the grayish mass on the slides. There were colored patches that he supposed were mental activity, or as Ellie had teasingly told him once, “proof that you’re actually using the thing between your ears.” They looked bluer than the patches on the brain without the drugs.

“And did it prove anything?” He’d willingly allowed somebody to give him psychotropic drugs. He must have gone insane. Granted, he’d spent the entire experience watching his own hand and quoting Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so nothing had really come of it. But it still gave him pause. Of course, what gave him more pause were some of the other tests: his brain activity while solving math problems, while watching footage from a skirmish in Vietnam, even watching porn. He hoped a different scientist had analyzed that particular test, and not Ellie.

“We’re still working on correlations,” Ellie said, waving a hand. “It’d be more useful to have a control group for all of this, but…”

“Yeah, I’m still the only one.” Chuck squinted at the screens. “Still, isn’t there anything you _do_ know about it all yet?” After all, they’d been sticking him in an MRI tube and attaching nodes to his head and giving him weird fluids to drink and weird shots for nearly a month now. If Dr. Johnson said he was making progress in therapy, and he was barely doing anything there, they should be able to tell him legions about his brain already.

“These things do take time. We’ve gathered some data, Chuck, but we’re still working on comparing it. Like I said, the lack of a control group…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chuck said, and slumped.

“Here.” Ellie handed him a grape lollipop.

Chuck gave her a stink-eye.

“Isn’t grape your favorite?”

“It is.” With a sigh, Chuck unwrapped the sucker and popped it in his mouth. “Thanks,” he said around it.

“No problem.” Ellie went quiet for a minute, her face sobering. Chuck heard a warning klaxon go off in his mind. Surely enough, his sister didn’t disappoint. “Chuck, there’s something that will help our research.”

Chuck crunched on the lollipop, his eyes narrowing.

“If somebody, maybe…read you one of the phrases? While we had you under observation?”

Chuck went cold. “No way.”

“Wait, hear me out.” Ellie held up a hand. “I’m not saying use the full phrase on you. We know from Sarah’s statement about what happened in Piute—”

“Where?”

“At that hotel, the one where she used the phrase on you.”

The knots tying Chuck’s stomach together tightened, threatening to strangle him somehow. Still, he managed to say, “Oh.”

“Sarah also told us that the phrases are less effective when you don’t use the associated accent. So maybe, if we just used one of the calming ones or one of the ones that allow you to speak another language…”

The knots tightened further. Chuck figured that if he threw up, at least he was already in a hospital.

“And if we analyzed a flash against a Lincoln response side by side, I think we could really make a leap forward in this research. And maybe see if there’s a way to remove both from your head.”

A spurt of hope shot through Chuck at those words, but reality quashed it, mercilessly. He highly doubted that Ellie and the others could simply remove or overwrite something that had taken two years of subliminal messaging, threats, and other exercises to put inside his head. Not when most of the government hadn’t had the first clue these sorts of trials were happening in the first place.

“Ellie, I don’t want to do that,” he said. “I don’t…I don’t want somebody else having that kind of control over me. There are only two people that know any of the phrases.”

“Besides you.”

“Yes, and there’s something to be said about two people only being able to keep a secret if one of them is dead.”

Ellie flinched. “But it’s me, Chuck. You know I wouldn’t ever—”

“I know. But nobody else needs to know the phrases.”

“Can you trigger yourself?”

“No.” Chuck pushed at the bridge of his nose. “It doesn’t affect me to say the words aloud, when I can.”

“When you can?”

“It’s hard to think even the words. I learned to approach it by thinking of half of a phrase at a time when I was writing it down after I flashed on all of them. Then I wrote them down in pieces and tried to read the pieces aloud. It didn’t do anything to me.”

“Oh, wow. I didn’t realize the mental subversion went that deep.”

“It probably goes deeper,” Chuck said, shrugging. “But I just don’t know about it because it’s too effective. Trust me, I’ve been forced to become something of a curbside philosopher over the last few months. Descartes apparently didn’t foresee the Intersect or Lincoln when he said ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Or maybe he’s right, and now what I am is a mindless killing drone.”

Ellie hit him.

“Hey!” Chuck stuck the lollipop back in his mouth. “Ouch. Mindless killing drone or not, that still hurts me.”

“Good. None of that now, do you understand me?”

Chuck sucked on the lollipop and gave a vague thought to sulking. Since it would do absolutely no good, he decided against it. It wasted too much energy, besides.

“If you won’t tell me a phrase to use and you can’t use one on yourself, there is another option.”

“What?”

“Sarah.”

Chuck’s first instinct was to glance at the door, to see if Sarah had joined them in that soundless way she had of moving. But the door remained shut. “What about her?”

“She’s one of the two that knows the phrases already. Why not have her read one to you? We’d keep the room blocked off, of course, so nobody else could hear it—”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Chuck said. His stomach began a slow roll toward his knees.

“Why not?”

“Why do you think it _is_? After all, Ellie, you were more pissed at her than any of us for what she did.” The amount of anger in his voice surprised him; Ellie blinked, leaning away from him. He didn’t care. Fury and fear had already begun to burn through him. “Why are you even advocating this?”

“Look, I have my issues with Sarah, that’s true. I don’t deny it. But she’s here now, at your request. And also at your request, I’ve backed off. Remember, you were the one that argued her case after you found out Beckman was ordering her to have sex with you.”

“Which she never did, though we did get pretty far once on my bedroom floor.”

“O…kay. Didn’t know that. Wasn’t sure I wanted to. But to continue my point, you also insisted on her being part of the party in Russia.”

“So?”

“So you’re kind of giving me mixed messages here. You either trust this woman or you don’t.”

“It’s not a matter of trust. It’s…” Chuck racked his brain for the words to describe it. Finding none, he tossed up his hands.

“It’s what, Chuck?”

“It’s hard to explain! She used a phrase on me once and it still hurts. I can rationalize it—I know her, as much as I can, and I get why she did it, but it hurts and I wonder if she did it once, did she try it other times? It’s not fair to think that and I know that, but it still keeps me up at night, wondering.”

“Oh.”

“And I trust her, I know I do, and I _get it_ , but I—like I said, it’s not rational.” 

“Do you honestly believe,” and Ellie looked him directly in the eye, “that she used a phrase on you more than once?”

“No,” Chuck said, and blinked. He hadn’t even sounded uncertain. After a second of thought, he realized he wasn’t uncertain at all, but: “And yet that doesn’t stop me from thinking about it.”

“Chuck…” Ellie climbed off of the stool and nudged him so that he could make room for her to sit on the examination table next to him. “Everybody has doubts.”

Chuck snorted.

“No, it’s true. Some mornings I wake up and wonder why Devon would want to marry some woman who turned into a basket case and put him through a lot of crap when we were dating.”

“Because he’s lucky to have you, that’s why.”

Ellie smiled. “He is. But that doesn’t stop the doubts, not all the way.”

“What does?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

“What makes them worse, though, is letting them control you.”

“How can they not? Ellie, have you seen me? I’m—”

“Doing the best you can with the incredibly awful hand you’ve been dealt. You haven’t given in and you’re still fighting.” Ellie’s voice was firm in that “I dare you to argue with me” way she’d perfected as a teenager.

Chuck looked down. Ellie’s face clearly showed all of the confidence in the world in him; it was too bright and too strong, not when he had trouble getting out of bed in the morning and sleeping at night.

“This is why I think you need to ask Sarah to help with this, too.”

“Why?”

“Because you want to get past this thing. I don’t trust Sarah one hundred percent yet, but if she wants to help you, this is one of the best things she can do. We need to know as much about how Lincoln works as we can, so we can take steps to countermand it. We need to see it in action.”

Chuck, realizing belatedly that he’d finished off the lollipop, and there was nothing left, removed the stick from his mouth. He heard Ellie’s words and he understood them, but they did nothing to stop the flood of cold water that hit his gut. He’d killed a man using a Lincoln phrase. Sure, it hadn’t been his finger pulling the trigger, but it had been his words controlling the finger that had. And Kohl was no different than him. Somebody could do the same thing to him, so easily.

“The atmosphere would be controlled,” Ellie said. “The scientists already don’t know who you are, and we would block all sound from the room so that nobody would hear the phrase. And if you’re uncomfortable, we can have one of these,” and she picked up Chuck’s hand to show him the now healed tattoos on his wrist, “on a poster on the wall, or we can have some of the aural Intersect triggers ready to go. Like I said, the Lincoln phrase will be milder without the accent, which means you should have cognizance enough to flash and get yourself out of it.”

Chuck forced himself to remain calm, though he could see Kohl killing Carver in a loop in his mind. He kept his voice steady. “Can you guarantee that?” 

“Not all the way, but my hypothesis is that I’m pretty sure that’s what would happen. And let’s face it, Chuck, we _do_ need to see Lincoln in action somehow. This is the safest way.”

“So you can get it out of my head and Casey and Sarah can go back to their real jobs,” Chuck said, his voice oddly dull to his own ears.

Ellie gave him a puzzled look. “Is that what they said they were going to do?”

“Not exactly. It’s just assumed.”

“Hm. You may want to talk to them. If you ask me, going back to her ‘real job’ isn’t something that woman wants to do.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, Chuck,” Ellie said, and sighed. “Try to see a little beyond what you want to see sometime. It’ll do you a world of good.”

**21 JUNE 2008  
ST. LUCY’S HOSPITAL  
15:07 EDT**

Chuck dragged himself out of the testing room and into the hallway directly outside, where Sarah waited. Most of the scientists were back at the headquarters in Ft. Mead, where they received only the results from the various monitoring systems. Only Ellie had actually been present in the room with him, administering the various tests. Today it had been reflexes. Over two hours of reflexes—after lunch, of course, though he’d barely eaten. Over two hours of bright flashes of light, plush toys being tossed at him, and loud noises.

He now felt a bit like a sponge that had been dropped in a trash compactor. And then set on fire and, after all of that, reincarnated as a dung beetle and stomped to death by somebody wearing size fourteen Doc Martens.

“Good session?” Sarah asked, standing from where she’d been waiting on the bench, reading a magazine.

“If I never see so many balls flying at my face ever again, it will be too soon.”

“Erm…”

Chuck’s brain caught up with the rest of him. He debated praying for a sinkhole to open up beneath his feet, again decided that would waste too much energy, and sighed. “There were these plushies and they were…testing my reflexes and…”

“Got it,” Sarah said. “So…bad session, then?”

“Oh, you know. Testing. Lots of testing. Can we pretend I never said any of that?”

“Any of what?”

“Thank you.” 

They began walking toward the parking lot, which would require a long trek through a maze of corridors. The first couple of times, they’d gotten lost, but after so many weeks of these various sessions, Chuck was positive he could make the trek in his sleep.

“Reflexes, huh?” Sarah asked.

“They hooked me to monitors and threw things at me. If you ask me, it was probably Ellie getting me back about the toaster.”

“The what?”

“I was seven, okay?”

“I…okay. Are they making any progress?”

“Ellie says they are.” Chuck shrugged, a quick, jerky motion of his shoulders. There hadn’t been too much flashing, so he only had a low-grade headache today, but the rest of him felt drained and tired. “She has a bunch of other tests she still wants to run.”

“Oh? Like what?”

Chuck stuck his hands in his pockets and watched the linoleum squares as they passed by below him. “She wants to try using a phrase on me. One of the, um, the calming ones, or the ones that makes me speak another language.”

Sarah frowned. “I see. And how do you feel about that? Are you comfortable with it?”

“Hell no.” Chuck pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. “I’d rather not, at all. Ever. But I don’t know. Ellie’s right. The more they know, the better they can understand what those people did to me, and the others.”

“Why not just use phrases on them?” The other Lincoln candidates, or victims, had been brought in from their bunkers. Ellie’s team was also studying them, Chuck knew, though his sister never talked about it. She always seemed a little pissed off that these people had been left in bunkers for years. He was, too, but he feared Ellie more.

“Well, I think they’re going to?” he said, though it came out as a question. “But none of them have the…”

“Intersect, right.”

“So I’m special. Speaking of which, erm, I was wondering if you’d mind.”

“Mind what?”

“Well, I can’t use the phrase on myself, and you’re one of the only two people that know it, so I was wondering if you’d help out with that test. I mean, it would be…” Chuck trailed off when he realized that Sarah was no longer walking behind him. Confused, he turned.

She’d stopped walking entirely. Her mouth was partly open, her face mostly expressionless, but her eyes, they were furious. She stared hard at Chuck.

He slowly drew his hands out of his pocket. “Sarah? Is something—”

“How dare you.”

Chuck took a step back in surprise. He’d never heard that much frost in Sarah’s voice, ever. It contrasted with the stark anger burning in her eyes.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, asking me that,” Sarah went on, and Chuck had a brief, terrifying mental image of a panther about to rip him to shreds from the way her arms and torso were tensed and knotted up. “How. Dare. You.”

“Sarah, I—”

“Chuck!” Ellie appeared around the corner behind them, waving. “You forgot your wallet!”

He’d never seen quite that much anger before. Dread and confusion had frozen him to the spot. Still, not taking his eyes off Sarah, who was staring back, furious, he said, “Ellie, can it wait a minute, I just—”

Sarah turned on her heel and stalked away. Chuck watched helplessly. Should he go after her? Would she turn and shoot him if he did? Her face had certainly promised that violence of that nature was an option. Chuck took a step, remembered her face, thought better of it, and swallowed hard.

He’d really, he noticed, stepped in it this time. He had no idea how, he just knew he’d blown it.

“Chuck? Did you hear me?” Ellie’s voice came from right beside him. He blinked and looked over, startled to see her there. “Hello?” 

“Uh, hi.” He took the wallet she was holding out. “Thanks.”

“Where’s Sarah going? The parking lot’s the other way.”

“I don’t know.” Chuck tucked his wallet away. “But I’m going to find out.” Even if he had to sacrifice a major limb to do so. “Thanks for this. Bye.”

Ellie looked confused as he took off. “Uh, bye?”

By the time he reached the corner Sarah had disappeared around, Chuck was flat-out running, the voice in his head chanting that this was a bad idea. He rounded the corner and nearly cursed. Sarah was nowhere in sight.

**21 JUNE 2008  
HOPSKY’S PUB AND GRILL  
15:19 EDT**

It was sheer dumb luck that led him to her: if he’d looked even a second later through the windows of Hopsky’s Pub and Grill, he would have missed the sight of Sarah and her distinctive blonde hair going around the corner into a back room, and the search would have continued for a long time before he thought to look for her in the pub by St. Lucy’s. It just didn’t seem like her place; it was a hole in the wall pub, with a sandwich board out front declaring the specials to be the Reuben and the Rock Bottom’s Right on Rye, whatever the hell that was. Chuck stepped inside and felt vaguely sticky from both the humidity and the fact that the place hadn’t been mopped in the current century.

A bar ran along the wall, backed by a huge mirror and posters for various breweries and brands. Behind it, the bartender checked his text messages. 

“Excuse me,” Chuck said. “I’m looking for a woman. Blonde, about this tall? She just came in.” 

The bartender jerked his head. “Ronny seated her in the back. Good luck.”

“Uh, just out of curiosity, why do you say that, exactly?”

“That woman is piss-ed.”

“Oh, God,” Chuck said. “Yeah, that may be my fault, and…”

“Need some liquid courage?”

“And have her get angrier because I’m drunk? I’m an idiot, I’m not insane.”

The bartender laughed and waved him back. Chuck gave one brief wish that he’d taken the man up on his offer, girded his figurative loins, and headed into the back.

They’d seated Sarah in a back corner, dark, out of the way, which would have been at her request. Like the main character of _Gross Pointe Blank_ , she didn’t like having her back to an open room. Even from the doorway of the back room—which was mostly empty, thanks to the three o’clock hour—he could see from her posture that the anger hadn’t lessened at all. He gulped.

She saw him coming and gave him an icy look.

“Sarah, I am so, so sorry,” he said. He’d learned early on when dealing with women that apologizing first and copiously couldn’t go wrong.

The icy look didn’t soften. Some contrary part that hated the rest of him pointed out that at least she was looking directly at him, something she hadn’t really done in weeks. It really wasn’t all that helpful.

“Why?” she asked.

That one threw him. “What?”

“Why are you sorry?”

Chuck wanted to say: Because you gave me a look that could kill off most of the vegetation on the planet and then hot-footed it out of the hospital. He got the feeling that that was not the answer Sarah was looking for. “For bringing up the phrases?”

“Oh, my God,” Sarah said, and rubbed her forehead. “You have no idea, do you.”

It hadn’t been a question.

All of the sudden, Sarah went from seemingly pissed to merely looking exhausted. “You should go,” she said. “Get a cab to take you back to your place. If Casey has a problem with it, he can talk to me.”

For a second, Chuck considered getting up and leaving and bowing to her wishes. It was how they’d existed over the past month anyway. Idle chitchat, empty platitudes, avoiding eye contact. And she looked tired, and he knew that was his fault.

But he didn’t move. “What did I do, Sarah? What did I say to upset you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“If looks could kill, I’d be Rancor food right now. What did I do?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sarah said again.

“Well, whatever it is, I’m sorry. It was the phrases, wasn’t it?”

“Don’t apologize unless you know what you’re apologizing for.”

“How will I know unless you tell me?”

“Because!” Sarah hissed the word, glaring. The glare shifted back to a pleasant look for a second; the waiter appeared and set a glass with clear liquid in front of her. The minute the waiter was out of sight, promising to reappear with menus so he could take their orders, the glare reappeared. “You should know.”

This was something Jill had said to him whenever they’d argued, Chuck remembered, as much as it hurt to think of his ex. He knew Sarah wouldn’t appreciate the comparison, so he didn’t mention it. Instead, looking at Sarah’s face and the pained fury, he cast his brain about for what exactly it was that he’d said to upset her.

“Is this because I asked you to use one of the phrases?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, biting off the word.

“But it was…for science…” Chuck trailed off and finally looked at Sarah, fully. She was shaking. Sure, the tremors were nearly invisible, but now that he was fully paying attention, he could see them. She hadn’t picked up her glass or even moved her hand toward it, another sign that she was trying to hide the shakiness. And even though she met his eye, he could now see the tension running along her neck and jawline. She was clenching her jaw. 

He suddenly felt a hell of a lot less lost. And a hell of a lot sorrier.

“I shouldn’t have done that, should I have?”

Sarah finally looked away.

Chuck had no idea what to say. Admittedly, this was a more common phenomenon now that he had Sarah Walker in his life and the government had altered his brain, but part of him still noticed that it was disconcerting. After all, he’d talked himself into and out of so many situations, just on the power of his words alone. And right now, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Mostly he was perplexed, and a bit blown away.

The waiter finally appeared with a menu and a water glass for Chuck. “Need a minute?”

“The Reuben,” Chuck said. “And the Rock Bottom Rye whatever the thing on the sign was.”

Rock Bottom, after all, seemed pretty fitting at the moment.

“Good choice. And for you?”

“I don’t know. The same, I guess.”

The waiter departed, taking their unopened menus with him, and leaving the same awkward silence in his wake.

Finally, when the silence stretched out and onward and went for far too long, Chuck cleared his throat. “I’m sorry it didn’t occur to me that you’d be upset over that. I really was just asking because of the testing they want to run on me.”

“Let’s just forget about it.”

It would be easier to agree, to let this slip into the woodwork and pretend that this was exactly like everything else they’d been avoiding talking about since coming back to D.C. He was more than tempted to do so: he opened his mouth to agree. But something made him shut his mouth.

“Why?” he asked, instead. 

“Because we’re better if we forget about it.”

“No, not that. I mean—well, you were one wrong twitch from removing my head from my neck back there at the hospital. Why is that?”

“Chuck, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I do.”

Sarah glared at him.

Chuck sighed. “I’m not a mind reader,” he said, frustration making him glare back. “That’s not one of the powers the government magically decided to bestow upon me, you know.”

“Oh, now you’re making jokes about it?”

“I wasn’t—never mind.” Chuck’s glare deepened to a scowl. Why the hell was the woman being so complicated right now? He felt like he’d walked into a den of vipers that had been fed speedballs and then given a whetting taste of his blood. One wrong move and he was toast, but he didn’t know what the right moves were. “Glib or not, it still remains that I can’t read minds, and I can’t fix things unless I know what to fix. I am trying to do the best I can here for everybody, not just me, but I don’t know what that is, and I won’t until you tell me. And don’t tell me I should just know because most days I don’t even know what’s going on in my own head, let alone yours.”

Sarah leaned back in her chair.

“I’m sorry I made you angry,” Chuck said, his stomach sinking when there was no response whatsoever on Sarah’s face. “I am. But I don’t know _why_. It’s just a stupid test—”

“It’s not just a stupid test, Chuck! God.” Sarah gave him an incredulous look. 

“Then what the hell is it?” 

Sarah bit her lip.

“Sarah, please. Just tell me.”

“You’re asking me to break a promise I made.” 

If Sarah’s icy look of death earlier hadn’t already plunged the room to Hoth temperatures, this surely would have. Chuck felt his stomach clench. Who on earth had Sarah made this promise to? His traitorous brain threw out suggestions, making his stomach roil. Graham? Bryce? He clenched his fist under the table. “To whom?”

“To myself, to the universe, whatever. Does it matter? I swore after that day in the godawful desert when you disappeared on me that I would never use a phrase again, and you’re asking me to break that promise.”

No relief appeared. Instead, only bewilderment flooded Chuck. He blinked at her. “What are you talking about?”

“You! You and your stupid—” Sarah broke off, gulping in a deep breath, and Chuck realized that her eyes were shinier than normal. Dread flooded him. “You don’t get it. Sure, I used that phrase on you, and you do get that, but you don’t get what it did, do you? It was just supposed to be some calming phrase because you were coughing and I was worried you were going to choke and pass out and Fulcrum was going to shoot you, but it was more than that.”

“What was more than that?”

“You disappeared on me, Chuck! You disappeared into the desert, and I didn’t have a clue where you were or where you had gone, or if you were dead because some Fulcrum agent had shot you. And then, just like that, there you were. At the Grand fucking Canyon, freezing your ass off and not even really seeing anything weird about that. As though nothing had happened. Just there. Sending me emails, even. ‘Hi, Sarah, having a grand old time.’”

Chuck gaped.

“I come to find out, that’s part of your ‘programming.’ Yeah. Lincoln soldiers, trained to listen to the phrase and to run once the job is finished. Only, this time, you can’t run back to Siberia. You’ve got nothing on you but a laptop and a borrowed jacket and the programming’s less effective anyway because Bryce and I visiting you in the bunker ‘broke’ something, according to Graham, so you’re not as susceptible to the programming as the other candidates.”

“Wait a second—” 

“But even so,” Sarah said, still talking far too quickly and barreling over him as though she hadn’t heard him at all, “even so, by using that phrase at the hotel, I did something that left you helpless and you didn’t even have the first clue.”

His trip to the Grand Canyon had been in response to Lincoln? That…made total sense, Chuck thought. He sat back, vaguely aware that he was dazed and that there was possibly a stunned-stupid look on his face, but unable to do a thing about it.

Oh, God, Chuck realized. He’d run after Carver had tried to control him, too. He’d run all the way to Siberia, to the bunker, feeling vaguely the entire time like it had been pulling him like a magnet. He’d assumed it was just some need to feel safe.

Was nothing in his brain his own?

“Is that why you don’t want to do it now? Because you know I’ll run again?” he asked before he could stop himself.

“I don’t want to do it because I promised myself I never would again. And I’m not going to break that promise for anybody.” Sarah’s look skewered through him. “Not even for you, Chuck.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

“I didn’t think it would come up.”

“You didn’t think to mention to Ellie that running was part of the Lincoln programming?”

“I _did_ mention that to Ellie.”

“And what about to me?”

Sarah looked down. “I was hoping Ellie would have told you,” she said, mostly toward the table.

Anger swirled through him. “Great. Thanks for that.”

“Hate me all you like, but you can’t deny it’s been weird with all of this Lincoln stuff between us. Ellie’s the head scientist on the program, she needed to know, I was guessing she’d fill you in. You were going to find out, either way.”

“I would have appreciated hearing it from you more.”

“Would you have?” Sarah reached into the breadbasket and broke off half of a breadstick, though she didn’t eat it. “We both know how well me telling you about the phrase at the Heartbrake Hotel in the first place went over. Are you even trying to forgive me for that?”

“I’m…working on it,” Chuck said, which was the honest truth. He didn’t expand on the fact that it still felt like a physical pain in his stomach whenever he thought about what Sarah had done. The same pain, he discovered, was beginning to fill his midsection now. He’d run to the Grand Canyon because of Lincoln? Sarah and Ellie had known that fact about him, but hadn’t told him? “I really am.”

Sarah looked uncertain. “I am sorry about that. And I’m sorry now.”

He looked at her, though she didn’t look up from her ministrations on the breadstick. Now there were more miscommunications on top of the lies she’d told him. Why couldn’t they just have an easy path to walk, for once? “Why didn’t you tell me about…about this promise you made about the phrases?” he asked.

“Because I didn’t think you’d have believed me.” Sarah scowled and continued to break the breadstick into pieces. “I don’t see any reason why you do, even now.”

“I have plenty of reasons.”

“You’re a very confusing man, Chuck.”

“You’re even more confusing, Sarah. What a pair we make.”

Sarah was quiet for the longest time, staring down at the mutilated pieces of bread on the table. Finally, she looked up. “Are we a pair, Chuck?”

He answered that the only way he knew how: “I don’t know.” 

They were saved by the arrival of their sandwiches and their beers. The conversation ended and they were left back where they’d started, Chuck thought, neither of them likely sure where they really were at all.

“Chuck,” Sarah said, and he looked up from his plate. The emotionless mask of the past few weeks wasn’t back in place yet, but it was close, Chuck figured. She’d already siphoned away some of the sadness and weariness. “Do you want me to transfer?”

“What?” He blinked.

“Ellie’s going to keep pushing for this phrase thing to happen, and I…I’m not going to change my mind. It’ll probably make things worse.”

Chuck took a huge bite of his sandwich, surprised to find that it tasted good. He’d have thought all of this emotional anguish would have killed his appetite. “I’ll handle Ellie. We’ll figure something out. Besides, it’s not like they’re really going to ever remove Lincoln or the Intersect from my head. I doubt it’s even possible.”

Sarah gave him a startled look. 

“What?” he asked.

It took a few seconds for Sarah to shrug, almost nonchalantly. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this assignment, it’s that you should never underestimate a Bartowski,” she said. “I wouldn’t give up hope yet, Chuck. There’s some way to get that out of your head. And then you can go build that house in the mountains.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said, though he wasn’t sure he agreed. All he could see was a prison in the mountains, though he tried to push that thought away. If they could really get the Intersect and Lincoln out of his head…

No, he couldn’t afford to think like that. It was foolish, and it would only lead to heartbreak. They’d damaged him, and even though they’d thrown enough money at him to kit out his very own Batcave, there wasn’t any way to fix him. Believing there was would only mean bitter disappointment down the road. He knew that.

And yet, when they walked back to Sarah’s car through the hospital after their impromptu meal, he stopped at the gift shop and bought a copy of the _Washington Post_.


	61. Absolution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. — _Oscar Wilde_

**22 JUNE 2008  
BETHESDA, MARYLAND  
14:07 EDT**

They’d scattered the team—not far, of course, but a little farther apart than they had been in Burbank, which meant that it took a little more planning and time to get between the sets of apartments. It had made sense for Chuck and Casey to live together, as they were used to each other, but Ellie and Devon had needed a place closer to St. Lucy’s, and their own CIA escort. This meant that Chuck and Casey lived on one side of I-95, and Sarah had an apartment that adjoined Ellie and Devon’s on the other side.

Chuck pulled his car up to the curb in front of Ellie’s place, and tried not to stare too hard at the Porsche in the next driveway. Apparently, Sarah hadn’t had time to get rid of it after all, like she’d said she would in December. Granted, come February, she’d been rather busy tracking him across the globe, so he could understand why she hadn’t sold the car yet. It made him think of their first date, and the white-knuckled drive back to Gwen Davenport’s he’d made with the car while Sarah stayed behind at the Smithsonian. He’d been freaked out the entire time that he would scratch the car, so much that he wasn’t entirely sure _how_ he’d made it back in one piece.

Those had been the days.

He pushed thoughts of Sarah aside. He’d spent most of the night before in deep contemplation after their conversation in the bar, and he still wasn’t entirely certain how he felt about it. But that was for later. He needed to talk to Ellie now. Her schedule meant that she’d be home right now.

He knocked on the front door and froze when he heard low giggling from inside. He’d sent a text, but…apparently Ellie hadn’t checked her phone, and he was going to interrupt something he’d worked hard to never consciously think about. He shot a wary look at his car, gauging the distance and trying to figure out if he could make it, start the engine, and drive away before Ellie realized he was there.

Ellie pulled the door open, putting the kibosh on a mathematical equation that had ironically taken longer than it would have to actually run across the yard. “Chuck! Hey, did I know you were coming by?”

“Um, I sent a text. I’m sorry—is it a bad time? I can come back later.”

“Of course not. Come in, come in.” Ellie tugged on the sleeve of his T-shirt to ensure that he would. She gave him a hug, her usual greeting. “What brings you by?”

“Chuck, hey!” Devon wandered in. Of course, he was shirtless, wearing only his scrub pants and sneakers, but Chuck figured that was probably how he spent most of his existence. Chuck decided to stop analyzing it, as his brain would probably do something it had avoided through every Lincoln and Intersect reveal, and melt. “Welcome to our humble abode! I’m just about to mix up some energy shakes. Want in? It’ll do wonders for your colon.”

“I think I’m good, thanks,” Chuck said, as he’d been subjected to quite a few colon-cleaning shakes in California. It was another thing he put a lot of thought into avoiding.

“You sure? It’s delicious.”

“Really, I’m good with water. But thank you.” 

“C’mon,” Ellie said, jerking her head. “Kitchen’s this way. I thought you were usually deep in some kind of quest with Morgan at this time of the day.”

“Just wasn’t feeling the need to own some noobs,” Chuck said. “And I had something I kind of wanted to talk to you about.”

“Is this about Sarah?”

Chuck glanced instinctively toward the front yard and Sarah’s Porsche. He covered the gesture by quickly scratching the back of his neck, but when he turned, Ellie had her eyes narrowed. He faked a smile. “What about her?”

“Just wondering. She took off kind of fast yesterday. Is something going on with you two? Again?”

Now there was a question fraught with danger, sand-traps, and possibly poisonous snakes, Chuck thought. He answered it with a shrug. “It’s not about Sarah, actually. It’s about—” He shot a look at Devon, working at one of the kitchen’s counters to assemble what looked like the most disgusting energy shake on the planet, decided he couldn’t really care about national security, and went on anyway. “It’s about Lincoln.”

Devon’s head shot up. “Should I be here for this, babe?” he asked Ellie. They’d agreed as a team that it was better for him if he only knew sketchy details about the properties of the Lincoln project.

“It’s fine with me,” Chuck said. “Go on making your shake. I’m the one who’s interrupting.”

“You’re not interrupting. You’re always welcome here, you know that.” Ellie patted his shoulder and moved around Devon, pulling a box of crackers out of the cabinet. “I haven’t had a chance to begin evaluating the data from the tests we ran yesterday, though.”

“It’s about something besides that.” Chuck took a seat at the kitchen table. He recognized some of the décor around the kitchen as being from the Burbank apartment. He and Casey had just gone with whatever furniture the housing company had picked. Ellie had put up pictures and paintings—there were even a few snapshots of him on the refrigerator.

“Chuck?” Ellie asked, and Chuck blinked to realize that he’d drifted off into his own thoughts. It had happened to him more right after the bunker. Over a month later, it was still perturbing. “What is it?”

“Oh. Um, sorry about that. I just wanted to know—why didn’t you tell me about the running?”

“What running?”

Chuck looked down at his hands. Talking about Lincoln wasn’t as physically impossible as some of the things he’d listed the day before, but it was still hard. “Sarah told me that the reason I ran after Piute and back in February was because it was a Lincoln condition.”

“Well, yes, of course, that’s part of the…you didn’t know.” Ellie frowned, and looked down quickly. Almost too quickly, Chuck thought. On the heels of that thought came the idea that maybe he was being too paranoid. Casey had made that accusation three times in the past week, after all. Maybe the other man had a point. Ellie looked back up. “I don’t understand. You know more about Lincoln than any of us. You’re the one that read the few documents there were.”

“I did. That wasn’t in any of the paperwork.”

“That’s odd.”

“So that’s why you didn’t tell me? Because you thought I knew?”

“I really thought you did. It should have occurred to me that it probably wasn’t obvious until you looked at it from a bird’s eye view.” Ellie gave him an apologetic look now. “I mean, they kept you guys in these bunkers that were equipped for everything, it looks like. You weren’t exactly like Kleenex—use once and toss. You were expensive to train and to upkeep. I would think that there would be a ‘once your mission is done, return to base’ trigger somewhere.”

“Oh.” Chuck rolled that through his brain and picked up a cracker, though he didn’t eat. Casey was right; Ellie’s glance down hadn’t meant anything and he was being too paranoid. “Yeah, that makes a scary amount of sense.”

“I’m sorry. It does. Just out of curiosity, Sarah didn’t tell you? I thought you two talked about what happened in Piute last month.”

“Not in enough detail, apparently. That’s why she won’t use the phrases on me. She’s worried I won’t be able to overcome that conditioning and I’ll take off again.”

“I doubt you’d get past her again,” Ellie said, smiling a little, though Chuck noticed she didn’t precisely deny that Sarah’s worries weren’t accurate. “I think she sleeps with one eye open and on your watch tracker.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Casey’s the same way.” Chuck swallowed the cracker whole.

“They care for you. In their own, strange, spy ways.”

“Yeah. Ellie, weren’t you worried?”

“About what?”

“That I was going to run again if there was a phrase used on me? I mean, I’ve run twice.”

“The first time, you only went to the Grand Canyon and you came out of it quickly. That was with a mild phrase, like the one we plan on using if we can figure out how—don’t look at me like that, I already brought it up with Sarah and got my head bitten off for my efforts. We’ll find something else.”

“Yeah, but then I ran away to Siberia,” Chuck said, forcing the scowl away. He loaded up another cracker with cheese and some of the summer sausage Ellie had set out.

Both of them jumped as the blender started up. Ellie covered with a laugh, shaking her head as they turned back from where Devon was focused on his art. “Yes, you did,” she said, sobering again. “But you came back, you never fully lost touch the way Lincoln-conditioned training would have had you done. And you’re forgetting two key factors.”

“Which are?”

“First, you know about the running now, which means I think you can overpower your own thoughts, like you’ve been doing with the rest of the—” The blender cut off, making them both jump again.

“Sorry,” Devon called.

“Like you’ve been doing,” Ellie said again, “with the rest of the automatic Lincoln instincts and impulses. And secondly, I think you burned that bridge, too.”

“How?”

“I think part of you recognized why you’d run on a subconscious level and where you would run to again, if you were given the choice, and I think you—quite literally—blew it up.”

“The bunker,” Chuck said, frowning. He sagged against the back of the seat, letting that one sink in. “I don’t think that’s the reason I blew it up, El. I mean, it’s a little poetic when you put it that way, but I was mostly just angry. That was the best way I could give them the finger. So I did.”

“Sure,” Ellie said. “But maybe some of it was subconscious, too?”

“Maybe.” He wasn’t sure. Ellie’s theories had always made him think. They had such different ways of looking at problems: Ellie saw the big picture, he fixed small details. They’d probably had more of their fair share of fights as kids because of it, but as adults, sitting in a kitchen while Devon made what looked like the world’s most disgusting smoothie, the differing philosophies came in handy. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Maybe you’re right.”

“See? It’s like I always tell you, you’re smarter than you think.” Ellie bit into a cracker.

Chuck wrinkled his nose at her. “I thought what you always told me was that I’m too smart for my own good.”

“The two are not mutually exclusive. And you’re forgetting what would happen if you _did_ run.”

“Sarah chases after my car like the T-1000?”

“Pretty much. Want to stay for dinner? I was going to go over those results from yesterday, but I can blow that off, we can watch a cheesy sci-fi movie for old times’ sake.”

The offer was more tempting than he’d expected it to be. Chuck hadn’t had much desire to do anything as of late, but the idea of watching a silly movie with Ellie and Devon actually sounded nice. On the other hand, he’d been up all night thinking and if he didn’t act on it, he might never do so. So, regretfully, he shook his head. “I left things in a weird place with Sarah. I need to go talk to her.”

“Oh, sure.” 

“Sure you don’t want one for the road, buddy?” Devon asked, holding his shake aloft.

“Devon, I mean no offense at all, but that smells like soup.”

“So?”

“So smoothies shouldn’t smell like soup. But thank you, anyway.” Chuck pushed away from the table and started toward the front door, nerves jumping in his belly.

“Be faster to try the balcony, bro,” Devon called.

Chuck turned. “Sarah’s on your balcony?”

“Not quite. Go on, you’ll see.” Confused, Chuck let Ellie push him back through the apartment and out the sliding glass door off of the kitchen. The balcony overlooked some kind of communal lawn. His and Casey’s place had a similar setup, though it was mostly retired folks in the apartments around them, so the playground there was sparsely used. Such was not the case here; he could hear children’s shouts the minute he stepped out onto the balcony, which apparently was shared by Sarah’s apartment with only a rail between them. Both balconies were empty.

A pair of shapely calves dangled over the side of the roof, solving the mystery of the missing Sarah without a single phone call to Ned and Nancy. Chuck stared at them for a second—the woman’s legs were a work of art, after all—before craning his neck to look up. The rest of her was out of sight.

“Uh, Sarah?”

The rest of Sarah appeared. She was in her off-duty clothes—a tank top and very short shorts. “Chuck? What are you doing here?”

He attempted a smile, though the light hurt his eyes. The sun wasn’t directly overhead, but the change from outside to inside still made him squint. The doctors that had examined him after Lincoln had told him he would be a little more sensitive to light for some time, thanks to the years underground. “Came by to talk to Ellie. She said you might be out…up here.”

“Oh. Well, here I am. What’d you want to talk to her about?”

“Lincoln. Mostly about the running.”

Sarah’s face grew unreadable, as it was wont to do these days. “What was the verdict?”

“She thinks it’s not a problem anymore. My blowing up the bunker may have been some kind of psychological sever. And it really was a miscommunication, apparently.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Chuck looked down to rest his eyes a bit. “Sometimes I wonder how much the two of us are preconditioned not to tell and how much of that is CIA-influenced.”

“A lot. Maybe less than you think.”

“Maybe. Can I…can I come up?”

Sarah’s head swiveled so quickly, Chuck nearly felt a twinge of sympathetic whiplash. “What? Was there something you wanted to talk to me about? Is something wrong?”

“No.” The intensity had come out of nowhere so fast that he blinked and took a half-step back out of surprise. “I just wondered if you wouldn’t mind company, that’s all.”

“Oh. Sure. Come on up. Just be careful. Actually, do you need help? It’s not the easiest thing to get up here.”

“I’ve got it.” After a second of deliberation, he climbed up onto the railing separating the two balconies, using the drainpipe to steady himself. It only took a little upper body strength—which he had kept, thankfully, as Casey insisted on daily trips to the gym and he regularly met Russ Davenport for boxing practice—to pull himself up onto the edge of the roof. It burned through the seat of his shorts. “Oh, Ellie’s going to kill me if she finds me up here like this.”

“She regularly comes out to scold me,” Sarah said, giving him a small smile. “And then she climbs up here, too. The view’s decent.”

“Most people would just buy deck furniture,” Chuck said, though he found himself nodding. The view wasn’t all that bad: the roof overlooked a playground and a bit of the trees in the forest spreading around them, painting a somewhat bucolic scene. It wasn’t anything comparable to the views he imagined she was used to seeing as a jet-setting spy, but it was peaceful, in its own way. “This is nice. All it needs is a zip line.”

“Maybe. I’ve had my fill of those.”

“Oddly enough, me, too.”

“Gee, really?”

Chuck attempted a smile, felt it fall flat, and decided to let the sarcasm between them fade away. They sat, taking in the view with the humid, warm Maryland sunshine beating down on them. The back of his T-shirt began to stick; he cast a surreptitious glance at Sarah’s knees, but they didn’t seem to be red. She’d apparently put on sunblock.

Screaming from the playground made him jolt and look over, but it was only some kind of game, not the bloodcurdling death rattle he imagined. “They always this loud?” he asked.

“You get used to it.”

“I guess you do.” Chuck watched a boy and a girl chase each other. “My God. Ellie’s getting married. If she follows her life plan, she’ll have one of those in a couple of years.”

“And you’ll be Uncle Chuck. Going to create a fun game room for said niece or nephew in that big mountain fortress of yours?”

Chuck’s stomach pitched at the thought. “I dunno. I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I never thought much about the mountain house and kids. Together. At all.”

“Oh.”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea to have kids there. Not while I’m…” Chuck gestured vaguely at his face with his left hand. He saw Sarah’s eyes cut to the loose bandage on his wrist. “Like I am.”

“I see.”

“Yeah. Who knows? Maybe by the time it becomes an issue, I’ll have already snapped and the kids won’t be able to visit me until they’re eighteen because of prison rules anyway.” Chuck attempted to put humor into his voice. It fell short of the mark. By about ten miles.

Sarah turned and stared down at the playground, saying nothing. 

“That was a joke,” Chuck said. “A terrible one.”

“Not funny at all.”

“Sorry.” He felt like shrinking into himself, though she wasn’t even looking at him. “My therapist has been recommending that I try to find more humor and…I’m sorry. That wasn’t a good joke at all.”

“Forget it. It’s fine.”

Chuck watched her out of the corner of his eye, but her face didn’t give anything away. “If you’re sure.”

“What are you doing here?” Abruptly, Sarah turned to look at him, her face cold. “You’re usually playing your video games at this point in the day, right? Don’t tell me you just came by to practice your stand-up comedy routine.”

“I came by to talk to Ellie,” Chuck said.

“Then what are you still doing here? You’ve talked to Ellie.”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Why?” Sarah asked, her face never changing.

“Because I was up all night, thinking about yesterday, about the bar and I want…”

“Want what?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. Something. I want things to not be weird between us.”

“We were together, Chuck, and you found out I lied to you about being a sleeper assassin. There’s no way this can’t be weird.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little depressing? Can’t we be friends?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Have you forgiven me for what I did?”

Chuck hesitated.

“See?” Sarah raised an eyebrow and turned to face forward again. She sighed. “That’s why it can’t not be weird. We can’t be friends with our history and with you feeling the way you do. One—or both—of us will get hurt. And I don’t want that for either of us.”

Chuck stared at her. “I forgive you,” he said, his mouth hijacking itself away from his brain.

Sarah went deathly still. “What?”

Apparently, now that his mouth had a mind of its own, it was on a roll. Chuck listened with some kind of detached—horror? No, that wasn’t quite the word he needed, as it wasn’t horrifying. Intrigue? Fascination? Something. Chuck listened as his mouth continued, “I always understood it, you know. I never really blamed you after I put it all together, what had happened. I still don’t blame you.”

“I wish you would, sometimes,” Sarah said, her voice too quiet.

“I wish I weren’t a less handsome Bennett Marco, but you know, can’t have everything.”

Sarah gave him a flat look. “Another bad joke.”

“Sorry. Gallows humor is the only humor I’ve got left.” What was the saying? In for a penny, in for a pound? He didn’t understand it, but the floodgates had been broken, and he might as well just go for it. He sighed. “Look, it hurt, knowing you’d been part of what happened to me and that you didn’t tell me about it. But I get it, like I said. So I forgive you, and I’m sorry it took this long.”

“You needed time.”

“Even so. I should have been a better friend, all around. Let’s just call this a clean slate. I’ve forgiven you—” Though his stomach, Chuck realized, was sinking rapidly at the thought and there were warning bells going off in his head to abandon ship, that he didn’t want to do this. Even so, he soldiered forward. That was his life now: doing things he disliked regularly, and lying to himself that it was okay, and there wasn’t a way out of it in the foreseeable future. And if it would be better for Sarah, then that was fine with him. “I’ve forgiven you, you’ll forgive me, we’re on an even keel, tied score, slate clean.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“I’m sure,” Chuck lied. He plowed on before he could think about it. “I’d like us to be friends again and for God’s sake, no more chitchat and definitely no more talk about the Orioles.”

“Friends,” Sarah said slowly, her face once again unreadable. 

Chuck held out a hand. “Friends,” he said.

For a second, he wasn’t sure Sarah would take his hand. Something indecipherable flickered across her eyes and she opened her mouth a fraction, as though she were about to say something and changed her mind. Finally, she nodded, once. “Does this mean I get to see the designs for your mountain fortress?”

“Sure.” He hadn’t drawn a single one. “I could use your input.”

“Fine, then.” Sarah wouldn’t meet his eye, but she took his hand. “Friends.” 

Chuck managed a smile, though he knew somehow that this conversation had not gone at all like he’d hoped. He almost opened his mouth to make exactly that comment—maybe Sarah would correct him that he was just hallucinating things again—but his smartphone buzzed in the pocket of his shorts. His hands were shaking slightly, but he managed not to drop the phone off the roof as he thumbed open his email.

The name on the first message made his jaw drop. “You have got,” he said, “to be kidding me.”

**1 JULY 2008  
CHICAGO UNO GRILL  
19:17 EDT**

Chuck set his briefcase on the floor and tried not to wince too obviously as he lowered himself to sit on the barstool. He swore his joints creaked, and cursed under his breath. A percussive grenade had gone off a little too close for comfort the night before, and his ears were still ringing. Casey had said the sensation would go away.

Casey had also said the building they’d been casing had been abandoned, though, so Chuck wasn’t feeling overly inclined to take him at his word at the moment.

They’d escaped with their lives and the intel Beckman had needed. That hardly seemed to matter when he felt like a feeble old man the next day, thanks to the fact that they’d been forced to dangle from a ledge for what felt like an excruciatingly long time to avoid being caught by the enemy. Their first mission back in the field and while it could be considered a success, his joints might argue otherwise.

Chuck looked down, realized that his knee was jiggling, and scowled. He stilled the leg and ordered a Coke. It occurred to him that he’d dropped three hundred on a plane ticket to get past security, just to purchase a flat airport Coke that he probably wouldn’t even drink. Six months before, it would have made him cringe. Now, he was a millionaire. Three hundred bucks was a drop in the bucket. Well, six hundred, really. Sarah hadn’t let him come alone. But even six hundred felt like nothing now. Besides, it wasn’t like he _wanted_ to be here—or even that he _should_ be. 

The bartender set the Coke in front of him. Chuck watched a drop of condensation slip down its side and wondered, for the eighth time, what he was doing there, in rumpled slacks and shirtsleeves and carrying a briefcase, doing his best to look like another weary business class traveler?

He didn’t owe Bryce Larkin a thing. In addition, it was stupid to be here. There hadn’t been an Intersect attached to the email. It had been a simple message: Bryce asking to meet with him on a layover at Dulles. Bryce hadn’t even asked him to come alone. Hell, if Chuck wanted to get technical, Bryce hadn’t asked at all. The email had mentioned a layover. That was it. He came anyway. He had relied upon his spy side to blend in, and he had no idea why. He didn’t understand why he was here. He didn’t even know if he wanted to be here.

Yet, here he was.

“Another?” the bartender asked, and Chuck discovered he’d polished off the Coke. He nodded.

Dr. Johnson had said he was making progress in therapy, though most days it felt like he slid backwards rather than taking the steps forward she claimed he was. The agoraphobia came and went—it was pretty strong now, like a weight between his shoulder blades because he was in an airport with a lot of open space and a lot of people around, people that could be moles for Graham, that could whisper in his ear—and the depression and malaise had started to abate, especially after he’d dropped by to see Ellie and Sarah the week before, and he and Sarah had made their uneasy pact to forge ahead into friendship. Chuck had brought up the topic of Sarah to Dr. Johnson after that, even. They hadn’t talked about it again, so Chuck wasn’t sure that could be considered progress.

His cell phone buzzed. Warily, he checked the screen: a text from Dave about an expansion pack to a game they both played. He sent back a reply and jerked in surprise when the phone buzzed again.

This time, it was Sarah, letting him know she’d set up in front of the gate opposite the bar. Chuck gave her a small wave. She smiled even as she shook her head and waved back. He wasn’t supposed to acknowledge her.

Bryce was going to spot her anyway, so what did it matter? Bryce rarely missed anything.

Movement to his left made him turn before he was fully aware of having moved. That was a Lincoln thing, Chuck had realized early on. It was startling to realize how aware of everything he’d always been, when he’d thought himself rather prone to distraction. But no, now that Sarah had called attention to his Lincoln-trained mannerisms, Chuck couldn’t help but be regularly startled by his own powers of observation.

He trained his eyes on Bryce. The other man came up from down-terminal, a laptop bag strapped over one shoulder. Unlike Chuck, who hadn’t been flying and therefore really shouldn’t be rumpled, he was perfectly put together, suit unwrinkled, not a hair out of place. He certainly didn’t look like he had been on the edge of death five months before. He spared Chuck only a split-second glance before turning to the bartender. “Heineken, please.”

While the bartender fetched the bottle, Bryce took a seat on the stool next to Chuck’s. “You came,” was all he said.

There was probably something pithy he was supposed to say to that, Chuck figured. He’d missed out on the James Bond part of spy training, though, so he moved a shoulder. “Yeah.”

“Alone?”

Chuck’s mouth moved without thought to the rest of him. “Not quite.”

“Yeah. I saw her. Just wasn’t sure I was ‘supposed’ to, or not.” 

Chuck shrugged.

“Thank you for coming,” Bryce said. “Wasn’t sure you would.”

Now, Chuck swiveled on the bar stool and faced his friend, fully. He hadn’t been sure what to expect when he saw Bryce again: to say that his relationship with the other spy was tumultuous was a bit of an understatement. They’d been best friends at Stanford, always together, roommates, with each others’ backs the entire time. After Stanford, Bryce and Sarah had literally become his only window into the outside world, apart from the Internet. And then Bryce had sent him the Intersect, and there had been fear, doubt, and anxiety, followed by relief that his friend truly wasn’t a traitor, after all, when Sand Wall had come to light.

Throughout that entire time, Chuck had respected (or feared) Bryce. And throughout that entire time, Bryce had been holding back a huge secret from him. About him.

Anger felt almost refreshing in light of that realization.

“I wasn’t sure I should,” he said, staring hard at Bryce. The other man flinched, but didn’t look away. “In fact, I must admit, I’m questioning my judgment. Why did you want to meet with me? Why not just let bygones be bygones?”

“I felt I owed you an apology,” Bryce said, his voice steady. “A lucid one, this time.”

Chuck said nothing.

“And you’re not going to make this easy on me, I see. That’s fair. I’m sorry.” 

“That’s it?”

“Yes,” Bryce said. He never looked away. Chuck wondered if that was something they taught at spy school, that unwavering sincerity. He dismissed that thought: Bryce had always been good at this sort of thing. “That’s it. I’m sorry. I tried to keep this life from damaging you, and I’m sorry that my actions led to what they did.”

Chuck opened his mouth to retort that by trying to run damage control, Bryce had actually made things worse. But he remembered that if Bryce hadn’t changed his results at boot camp, he would have gone straight into Project Omaha instead of Project Lincoln. And he would be either insane or dead.

Maybe that would have been better.

Chuck glanced instinctively in Sarah’s direction, in case she could hear thoughts now. No matter how hard they’d tried to be friends, every time he thought something self-defeating or self-deprecating, her anger became a scary thing to behold.

She was still flicking through her magazine.

“Chuck?” Bryce asked.

Chuck jerked his attention back to the matter at hand. His ex-best friend was trying to apologize, very sincerely it looked like, and his attention was drifting.

“Sorry,” he said, turning back toward Bryce. “So that’s it? You wanted to meet to apologize?”

“Not entirely.” Bryce took a swig of his drink before he opened his briefcase. He handed over a small disk. “I need you to give this to Dave. I wasn’t sure which couriers I could trust and I know you’re not Fulcrum.”

“How do you know that?” Chuck asked. “I’d say given what’s happened to me, turning traitor makes sense, wouldn’t you?”

“You’re not that guy,” Bryce said.

Somehow, just that offhand, self-assured statement was enough for the anger Chuck had felt lurking inside to begin taking over. Chuck wanted to grit his teeth and start seething, but it would do little good.

He _could_ be that guy. Most days, he wanted to be.

“And,” Bryce said, reaching into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, “I wanted to give you this.”

He set a thumb drive—a silly one, in the shape of a frog—on the bar between them.

Chuck took a sip of Coke and didn’t reach for the thumb drive. He pocketed the disk Bryce had handed him, though. The disk was work-related. The thumb drive had to be personal, or another Intersect, and he wasn’t falling for that again. “What is that?”

“Relax, it’s not an Intersect.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Chuck lied.

Bryce sipped his beer. “The new one’s not even ready to go yet.”

Chuck’s head snapped up. “What? New one?”

“Turns out you and I set something in motion last year, and they’ve been hard at work on ‘upgrades’ to the system. They asked me to upload the new one when it’s ready.”

“Are you going to?”

“Nah.” Bryce helped himself to a handful of peanuts from the dish next to him. “I’ve got other things to do with my time. They need me out there, fighting Fulcrum.”

“Out there,” Chuck said. The bitterness in his own voice surprised him; even now, was he jealous of Bryce’s super-spy-ness? Ridiculous, he thought, but considered. As much as he hated the government, how many times had he read the Bond novels? How many of the movies had he quoted? It would have to be something to think about later. “Where’s out there, Bryce?”

“Can’t tell you that, buddy.”

The endearment made Chuck’s fist, out of Bryce’s line of sight, clench. Some things never changed. “Figures,” he said, and made sure his hand wasn’t shaking as he reached for his drink. They were building a new Intersect. Well, that made sense. After all, his contract was that he had to do missions while he was the newest Intersect, which meant they had plans for another generation.

It made him sick to think about it. Did those people know what they were getting into?

Bryce apparently misinterpreted his silence, as he cleared his throat. “Lots of closed doors,” he said, apology lacing his voice. “Locked rooms, always the chance of getting caught and killed. I spent more time than I care to remember in a basement once.”

“Really?”

“God’s truth.”

“Playing Dungeons and Dragons?”

“Sure. Or doing real work. I don’t think anybody realizes how deep this Fulcrum perversion goes.”

Chuck wondered if that was a dig—after all, ever since he’d signed the contract allowing Beckman and Graham to utilize the Intersect in exchange for an unholy amount of money and Ellie’s research, his team had only been called out a couple of times, like the night before. The word Fulcrum hadn’t even come up on any of their missions.

“It’s from Stanford,” Bryce said, nodding at the thumb drive. “It’s your unedited recruitment interview with Fleming.”

“Unedited? Wait, there was more?”

“Why did you think I took that disk from you at the big game?”

Chuck remembered the feel of his face being pushed into the cold concrete as Bryce had insisted that he was innocent, and shook it off. They’d recovered the disk awhile later—Bryce had left it in the Crown Vic—to find out that it was recruitment interviews. Bryce and Chuck’s had been conspicuously missing. “To keep something in your own interview from being found out, of course.”

“Not my interview, Chuck. Yours.” Bryce picked up his beer, but didn’t drink. “I didn’t want this life for you. I tried to help.”

“And?” 

“I failed.”

Rage began to boil behind Chuck’s sternum with such intensity that he felt the airport bar around them compact with an audible crunch. Words came spilling out of his mouth. “You never learn, do you? The great Bryce Larkin can do anything, can be anything, and God help the mere mortal that can’t measure up.”

“Chuck—”

“Did it ever occur to you that it wasn’t your place to try and keep me from ‘this life,’ Bryce? I am an adult. I can make my own decisions. I have been, successfully, since I turned eighteen and earned the right to vote.”

“You had no idea what you were getting into.”

“And it’s physically impossible for you to say, ‘Hey, you know, _friend_ , this is kind of dangerous. There’s maybe some stuff you should know?’ Or was that phrase banned in that prep school you were always complaining about?”

“You wouldn’t have listened to me.”

“I was your friend. I respected you. I would have listened.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.” Bryce finished off his beer. “You had the drive. If they said something would help others, you did it, no questions asked. I saved your life, you know. If I hadn’t done something, you’d be dead right now like the rest of Omaha.”

“And you’re one hundred percent sure of that fact?”

Bryce had the audacity to look apologetic, as though he didn’t like what he was about to say either. “I’m pretty smart, Chuck.”

“God,” Chuck said. He wondered why there wasn’t steam shooting out of his ears like an old cartoon because his head felt like it might explode, and his heart was pounding. He feigned calmness as he pulled out his wallet and dropped some bills on the bar to cover his drink. “Amazing. Just amazing.”

“I can’t change anything. I’m sorry about what happened to you, but you have to understand, this is precisely why I did what I did. Watch the interview.” Bryce nudged the thumb drive toward him. “You’ll see.”

Chuck didn’t reach for the drive. If Bryce kept talking, he realized, he would break his pacifist rule and punch Bryce in the face. He heard his therapist’s voice in his head, cautioning that it was smarter to walk away, to say nothing.

Still, he couldn’t resist a parting shot as he rose to his feet. “Bryce, do me a favor. Look up the definition of ‘irony’ in the dictionary sometime.”

And with that said, he left. For some reason, he couldn’t look at Sarah as he did so. They’d agreed to be friends, but he wanted to be alone.

**7 JULY 2008  
BACHELOR PAD 2.0  
09:27 EDT**

Casey knocked once—a rare courtesy for him—and pushed Chuck’s bedroom door open. “Get up. I’m going for a run.”

Chuck didn’t look away from the ceiling. “Have a good time.”

“I think you should come.”

“I’m busy.”

“Clearly.” Casey crossed the room in two strides and grabbed the front of Chuck’s T-shirt, hauling him up and off of the bed. Chuck, used to being manhandled like this, didn’t even stumble upon finding himself abruptly on his feet. He did, however, sit down hard on the edge of the bed, which drew a grunt from Casey. “Move it, Bartowski.”

“I went for a run yesterday.”

“And you can go for one today. Amazing how runs are so plentiful like that.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Chuck said. “I don’t get the runs much. Is this a common problem for you, Casey?”

Casey glared and shoved Chuck’s sunglasses into his hand. 

“Fine,” Chuck said. “Guess I’ll go for a run with you.”

“Good. Get your shoes on, we’re leaving in two minutes.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Since he’d kicked off his running shoes beside the bed anyway, Chuck reached for a pair of clean socks from a pile of laundry nearby. He’d just jog in the shorts and T-shirt he’d slept in.

He ambled to the kitchen a minute later and found Casey ripping open a Powerbar. He wrinkled his nose, but caught the energy bar Casey tossed him anyway. “These taste like feet.”

“You eat a lot of feet, Bartowski?”

“Touché.” Chuck caught the second item Casey tossed with his free hand. Casey had apparently read through the _Post_ already that morning, as it had been refolded, and imprecisely at that. “Anything interesting?”

“Still a commie rag. Can’t you subscribe to something worthy, like the _Washington Times_? We’d have less trash in the apartment.” Casey sniffed at the pile of newspapers in the corner that Chuck had been gathering to recycle.

“We already have Fox News playing all the time. I need at least one refuge.”

“Wimp,” Casey said, sneering. Chuck set the _Post_ on the table to read through later. Since the date was a prime number, there would undoubtedly be a new message from Orion in the classifieds. He wondered if it would be a website for hunting gear, a used star map, or a belt this time. He also wondered, not for the first time, when Orion would tire of his silence and give up. 

There was time to think about that later. Now, apparently, Casey wanted to run. Instead of taking off down the path like he usually did on their runs together, though, Casey headed for the Crown Vic.

“Uh, Casey?”

“Get in. I’m feeling patriotic.”

“Patriotic” meant the heart of Washington D.C., Chuck discovered, and battling traffic to get there, one of Casey’s favorite activities. By the time they arrived at the lot—Casey apparently had quite a few connections, as the lot attendant greeted him by name—Chuck’s stomach was growling. He almost regretted not taking the time to grab a second Powerbar.

“Any particular reason we’re running along here?” Chuck asked as he climbed from the car.

“You’ll see.” Casey gave a cursory stretch and took off; Chuck rolled his eyes and followed. He’d learned early on that Casey apparently subscribed to Jack Lalanne’s theory on stretching. If predators didn’t need to stretch before going after their prey, neither did Casey.

It took Chuck nearly a quarter mile to catch up. Evidently, Casey was going easy on him today. Instead of a desultory remark, though, Casey gave him a nod when he fell into step beside the other man. Chuck shrugged inwardly and focused on his breathing, and also his situational awareness. They jogged down the side of the National Mall, past all of the monuments, heading for the reflective pool. In July. Even if it was only ten o’clock in the morning, Chuck already felt like he was running through a sauna. By a half mile, he was drenched and taking heavier pulls from his water bottle than he should have.

“I hate you,” he told Casey.

At a mile, he ditched his shirt, tucking it into the waistband of his shorts. He could use the sunlight. Bunker pale might have been a thing of the past, but he was nowhere near the golden tan he’d had as a teenager and college student in California. They skirted around the tourists, and it gave him pause to realize he didn’t really consider himself one of them.

That errant thought wasn’t enough to distract him from the fact that the temperature was soaring higher with every minute that passed, and there was a message for Orion waiting for him back at the apartment, and he was sweating gallons, a feeling he had never liked. When they reached the reflective pond, his thoughts had descended from annoyed to straight out swearing.

He hadn’t been lying. In this moment, he hated John Casey. That hatred only grew with every footfall through the sweaty summer day.

“Doing okay?” Casey asked, giving him a sidelong glance.

“I hate you,” Chuck said again.

Again, there was no pithy putdown in reply, only a shrug. “Good.”

“Wait.” He was gasping a little. It was probably due to the fact that they were running through Mother Nature’s version of the Inferno. “Why is that a good thing?”

“Let’s rest here,” Casey said.

Chuck was all too glad to stop, as his lungs felt rather like somebody had scraped sand up and down the length of his esophagus. He slowed to a walk and glugged down water, struggling to breathe. When he ran the back of his hand over his forehead, it came back dripping. At least, some annoyed corner of his brain noted, it wasn’t the damned agoraphobia doing that but an honest workout.

“This has nothing on Afghanistan, you know.”

“Good for Afghanistan!” Since the idea of diving into the reflective pool was all too tempting, Chuck deliberately turned his back to it. His eyes drifted up a set of rather impressive stairs across the street, to the familiar building atop them. From this angle, the giant statue of Abraham Lincoln wasn’t visible, but he’d seen enough movies—and had visited the site before—to know how it looked. 

Right now, he’d rather see an igloo than Abraham Lincoln.

“So I stopped here on purpose,” Casey said. “Not because you’re obviously dying of a little heat-stroke, Bartowski.”

“A little heat-stroke? And why would you—” Chuck’s eyes cut toward the memorial again, and the meaning sank in. He thought of the hotel Casey had picked in Moscow, merely because it had had the word Delta in its name. The summer day only grew warmer. “You’re an ass.”

“Yes. Yes, I am, but I’m an ass you’re going to listen to.” 

Chuck gaped at him. “You dragged me through a tourist-infested, hotter-than-hell morning run to visit the Lincoln Memorial just so that I could tell you you’re an ass? Casey, there’s like five or six steps you could’ve skipped in that equation.”

“Would you quit whining about the weather?”

“When it stops sucking, I’ll stop whining.”

“Shut up. I’ve got something to say, and you’re going to listen.”

“Well, then, say it already so that I can get inside out of this heat.”

Casey looked up at the set of steps leading to the Lincoln Memorial, shrugged to himself, and gestured for Chuck to follow him. Chuck was all too happy to sit down a couple of steps up, though he would have preferred some shade. He fanned himself with his soggy T-shirt.

“The thing I want to tell you is that you’re a moron,” Casey said, sitting down near him but not next to him.

Chuck turned and stared. Sarcasm was the only thing that seemed appropriate. “No, really, Casey, you’re right. I’ve always felt that the art of kicking a man while he’s down really is under-appreciated. I’m glad you agree.”

“I mean it this time,” Casey said.

“You always mean it.”

“No, I don’t.” Casey paused, tilting his head slightly as he considered. “Well, most of the time, I do. You really are an idiot when you put your mind to it. Some of the stunts you’ve pulled…”

“I think I got your point, Casey.”

“No,” Casey said. “I don’t think you do.”

“Well, then, what is it?”

“You’re being an idiot, and both you and Walker are paying for it.”

Chuck pushed himself to his feet. The temperature, the fact that he was sweaty and out of breath, the all-seeing stare of Abraham Lincoln on a point between his shoulder blades, all of it combined to make him realize that he really did not have to put up with the insults. He was doing the best he could. Nobody should expect any more than that, though they all seemed to love doing so. “Great,” he said. “Thanks. Couldn’t see that for myself. Appreciate the talk. I’ll see you back at home.”

Casey let him get two steps down before the other man called out, “Couldn’t ever be honest with yourself, could you, huh?”

Chuck sighed. “Honest with myself about _what_?”

“That you were pissed at Walker for lying to you. Hell, you still are.”

Chuck turned. “That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes. It is.”

“It’s not. She lied to you.”

“Great,” Chuck said. “You’ve joined Ellie in the Sarah-Can-Do-Nothing-Right League. As if it needed any more people.”

Casey laughed. There wasn’t much humor in the noise, but it was a laugh nonetheless as he took a slug from his water bottle. “Walker and your sister made up weeks ago. Not saying they’re best buddies anymore, but they get along. And Walker knows my issues. If she has a problem with me, she can stand up for herself.”

“She shouldn’t have to.”

“But she can.” Casey capped the water bottle. “You’re a couple of goddamned martyrs.”

Had he entered some bizarre alternate universe? He knew that it was Casey talking to him, as the man wore the same black USMC shirt, black shorts, black socks, and black shoes as the sadist that had dragged him on a jog through hell. “What?” he asked.

“The pair of you are so nauseatingly concerned with how the other feels all the damned time. That’s fine for some couples. Hell, if more people felt that way, the divorce rate wouldn’t be so high and we’d all be living the Reagan dream.”

Chuck shook his head, but Casey still didn’t flicker or anything to prove that he’d mysteriously become a hologram. “Should Dr. Phil be worried about his job?”

“Don’t be a smartass,” Casey said.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be that either.”

Chuck gritted his teeth. Annoyance was very quickly turning to anger. But his voice was mild as he said, “I was raised to believe in good manners.”

“Well, forget them. In fact, forget them and just admit you’re pissed at Walker already, will you? Otherwise we’re going to be dealing with you and Walker snipping at each other until we’re all in some godforsaken rest home together and when I think about that, I find that I’d rather pull my toenails out one by one.”

Grimacing at that imagery, Chuck took a seat on the step again. “I’m not pissed at Sarah,” he said. “I’m not. She had reasons for doing what she did.”

“So?” 

“What do you mean, so? It’s unfair to—”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about fair. The woman lied to you about what was inside your own head and put others in danger without your knowledge or theirs. For months. While you were,” and Casey’s scowl deepened into a glare, “involved. For the love of Patton, that _still_ leaves a bad taste in my mouth to think of the two of you being involved.”

Chuck’s jaw tightened so hard that he could feel his teeth grinding together, but he didn’t say anything. Part of it was sheer fury that left him speechless, but another, larger piece of it was that…maybe Casey had a point. And that was an awful thing to think. After all, he’d forgiven Sarah, hadn’t he? He’d told her so, to her face.

But part of him hadn’t wanted to. And he _understood_ , but there was just that sliver of resentment, the _why should I have to apologize_? He’d been the wronged party.

So had she, though. She was a victim, too.

“She knew something about your life,” Casey went on, and the words weaseled their way through Chuck’s ear canal and into that horrible, resentful part of his brain. “And she kept it from you. And then she controlled your emotions with a code-phrase and didn’t tell you about it until you confronted her. Months after the fact.”

Chuck pushed hard against the resentment that was growing with each word, and found that it wouldn’t budge. He clenched his fists, feeling the sweaty bandage on his left wrist tighten in response. When he spoke, it was through his teeth. “What are you trying to do, Casey?”

“I want you to stop trying to be the Everything-Is-Fine-Robot and just be pissed. Not at the government—I’ve heard all about that since we got here, and frankly, I’m tired of it—but at her. Sarah Walker. Your girlfriend.”

“I have no right,” Chuck said, “to be—”

“Who the hell cares about rights? For crying out—you have the emotional depth of a stick, you know.” Casey glared at him.

“That’s rich, coming from the man who has invented his own vernacular of grunts.”

Casey scoffed. “You know why you’re pissed and you won’t admit it?” he asked.

“No. But you seem to be in a sharing mood today. Why not fill me in?”

“It’s because your girlfriend’s not perfect,” Casey said.

Chuck blinked. “That doesn’t even make sense. I know Sarah’s not perfect.”

“Rationally, sure.” Casey took a long drink and spat half of it back out onto the steps. A family of tourists gave him dirty looks and a wide berth. Chuck suspected that had been his entire goal. When Casey looked back at him, it was with a sober look. No glaring, no scowling, just the bare truth on his face. “You had her up on a pedestal for all those months after the bunker, and that’s fine, it helped you get better. I’m not judging. But she was the perfect thing in your life, and then one day she wasn’t. She’d broken your trust and made you question things you hadn’t had to question before because she was the perfect anchor-point in your life.”

Chuck’s stomach sank.

Casey, however, just continued to speak in that low, steady voice. “The thing is, here, you can’t get mad at her. Not when you’re still Bartowski. After all, you were ‘raised to believe in good manners.’ You know it’s not rational and it’s not fair, and you still have that weird Bartowski thing about protecting others.”

“Don’t you mean weakness?” Chuck asked, his voice bitter.

“No, Chuck,” Casey said. “It’s not how I do things, but it’s not weak. What it is, though, is screwing things up for you. Makes sense, you’ve got so much going on in that head of yours when it can only handle a little—”

“Thanks, Casey.”

“I’m kidding. Mostly.”

Chuck glared.

“Either way, you’re dealing with a lot. I’m just calling it like I see it.”

“Wow, Casey,” Chuck said. He was lashing out; he recognized that, but he just didn’t _care_. He was hot and he was tired and Casey was speaking the dead truth, and that just made the anger swell even harder. “I didn’t realize you’d put so much thought into this. Did it hurt?”

Casey laughed. “Now you’re the one being an ass,” he said. “It’s because you know I’m right. I got eyes. I can use ’em to see what’s going on right in front of my face for two goddamned months. And I’m tired of it, so quit being fair and just admit you’re angry.”

“I’m not angry.” The words were automatic.

“You are. And you think you don’t have a right to be. You may not. You may. It doesn’t matter: you’re angry, either way. Admit that you’re angry, for the love of all that is holy.”

“And then what?” Chuck asked.

Casey rose to his feet and tossed his water bottle toward the trash can. “And then, Bartowski, do us all a favor and get over it already.” 

With a final grimace in Chuck’s direction, he took off down the stairs at a mild jog. Chuck watched him go in silence for a minute before he wordlessly rose to his feet and jogged after him. 

The entire way back to their apartment, neither of them said a word. The stone gaze of Abraham Lincoln followed Chuck past the reflecting pool, past the Capital Building, and all the way home.


	62. Faith, Friendship, and the Turn of the Screw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed. Idleness is its rust. Unless it will up and think and taste and see, all is in vain. — _Robert Townsend_

**7 JULY 2008  
BACHELOR PAD 2.0  
19:02 EDT**

Chuck held the door open to the apartment so that Sarah could slip inside past him. “I picked up something at Blockbuster,” she said, holding up a blue DVD rental case. “If it’s terrible, you can’t hold it against me. The video clerk said it was ‘as amazing as Bergman,’ whoever that is.”

He had to force himself to smile at her. Casey’s words from that morning sat too heavily on him for anything else. “That either means it’s an old film or an intellectual film, depending on which Bergman. Sometimes both.”

“Which would you prefer?” 

“Explosions,” he said, and Sarah laughed. She didn’t seem quite as at home at the new place as she had been at the Bachelor Pad, but Sarah wasted no time settling in on the couch. They were taking their agreement to be friends seriously, which meant one movie night a week. Before, they would have either talked or made out through the film. Now, they watched the movie.

He set the DVD in the player and turned toward the stairs. “Casey! We’re watching a movie. Want in?”

“I’d rather put my thumbs through my eye sockets,” was the reply from upstairs.

Sarah raised her eyebrows. “He sounds like he’s in a good mood.”

He wasn’t. After their run earlier, Casey had disappeared upstairs and had apparently attempted to decimate all of France on the bigger TV. Chuck was grateful. He wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with Casey, lest Casey revisit what he’d already called “The lady feelings conversation” on the way home. Also, he suspected that most of Casey’s anger came from the fact that Casey could no longer deny that he had deep thoughts about the human psyche.

So he was upstairs smashing Europe to pieces and Chuck was watching an intellectual movie with Sarah.

“You know Casey,” Chuck said.

“That I do. Is this an extra-special brand of cranky or the regular Mr. Sunshine?”

“Casey needs to be extra-special to be cranky?”

“Point,” Sarah said.

The menu for the movie popped up and Chuck frowned. “This is a Michael Bay flick,” he said, tilting his head. “How on earth did the video clerk think this was anything like Bergman?”

“Oh, he didn’t. I’m just messing with you.”

Chuck had to force another smile. He’d actually wanted to see this movie, though. Morgan regularly complained about Michael Bay’s lack of finesse, but Chuck couldn’t help it. He liked watching explosions—when they weren’t close up enough to sear his eyebrows. It was popcorn viewing, the perfect opportunity to turn his brain off. 

“To be fair, the clerk _did_ try to recommend something by Ing…mar? Ing…bert? Bergman. Whoever he was. Some director.”

Chuck glanced over at Sarah before he hit ‘Play.’ “And?”

“It looked terrible.”

“I’m really glad you went with the mindless explosions, in that case.”

“Me, too.”

In the end, he was even more grateful that Sarah hadn’t picked something from a more dedicated auteur. If the movie had had a more complicated plot than “Things blow up and the heroes try not to get blown up with them,” he wouldn’t have been able to follow it. His mind was just too full. First, there’d been his encounter with Bryce in the airport. And his conversation with Casey that morning, which still left a pit in his stomach. After that had come an even more sickening realization: Bryce and Sarah had done exactly the same thing to him. They’d both made decisions for him about his own life without telling him.

And now he was sitting next to Sarah, who smelled faintly of apples, on the couch.

He was angry at Bryce. He didn’t want to be angry at Sarah. Casey’s voice pointed out that fair didn’t matter yet again. Either way, he was angry, and there wasn’t any chance that it was going to stop until he acknowledged it. He had to face that.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Sarah said, and Chuck shook off the fog of deep thought. Sarah was glaring at the television, where the buxom heroine and the handsome hero had just avoided being crushed by a giant sign. “No way. That should’ve killed them.”

“How many times have I seen you avoid certain death by pulling the exact same move?” Chuck asked.

Sarah moved a shoulder. “That’s different.”

“How?”

“I’m Sarah Walker. That’s how.”

Chuck laughed, a long, genuine belly laugh that had Sarah grinning back at him. Casey had to be wrong, he thought. His head wasn’t clear and it wouldn’t be, not while his therapist said there was still a lot of work to do, but there was no way he was possibly mad at Sarah.

Or was he? He was mad at Bryce: his time in the airport had taught him that much. Chuck wasn’t confrontational, not when there was a non-confrontational road to be taken. And he had wanted to punch Bryce in the face. 

Looked at in an unemotional, dispassionate light, Sarah had done the same thing Bryce had: she had kept a secret from him for his own good. Maybe Casey had a point. Maybe he was secretly furious with Sarah and unable to do anything about it because his head was so screwed up, he didn’t know which way was up on most days. He’d felt resentment when Casey had mentioned his theory, but had that been at Casey’s words, or at Sarah’s actions? It was impossible to untangle the different thoughts and emotions, to spread each out like a piece of thread so that it could be examined in an analytical light. There were just too damned many of them, jumbled up together so that he had no idea where one feeling ended and another began.

“Oh, hey,” Sarah said. She picked up her purse. “I got you something.”

“Something better than two hours of no plot and unending explosions?”

“Yes, as unbelievable as that is.” Sarah dug through her bag and tossed something onto his lap.

Chuck picked it up. “A bracelet?”

“It should be big enough to hide the tattoos.”

It was an off-white piece of rope tied in a circle with a pattern of interlocking knots. It was a couple of inches wide, loose enough to fit around his wrist. He waggled his left wrist at her. “Because everybody at the NSA and CIA are starting to wonder exactly what I did to my wrist that requires the bandage?” 

“Exactly. It’s a fashion accessory, I know, but it should cover up whatever parts of the tattoo your watch doesn’t.”

“Excellent.” He’d been wondering about a replacement for the fake bandage himself, as he’d had to keep changing it to keep it from getting rank. And the longer he went about wearing it, the more suspicious people would get, as he’d said. He slid the bracelet on without looking at the Intersect tattoos, and admired his wrist. “Does it have any special meaning or anything?”

Sarah was quiet for a moment. “Not really. Sailors wear them to help them wipe the sweat off of their foreheads.”

“Sexy,” Chuck said, and Sarah laughed. “Well, thank you.”

“Very welcome. Plus, it’s a friendship bracelet. We’re friends, right?”

Chuck looked over. No matter how he felt, the resentment, the anger, the wanting to forgive, the ability to do so, nothing really changed that part of it. “We’re friends.”

**11 JULY 2008  
LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE  
10:38 EDT**

Chuck made a running leap, launched off with one foot, and thanks to what was probably a physics miracle or just his own lanky build at play, snatched the Frisbee from the air before it could soar by, or worse, be snatched by the other team. He took a running step, swiveled in place, and fired it off at Karminsky.

Karminsky dropped it. Chuck’s team groaned.

“You code with those fingers?” Barton shouted from across the field. 

Karminksy used only one finger to show Barton exactly what he thought of that sentiment.

Years of playing Ultimate Frisbee on the Stanford campus with Bryce and the other guys in his frat had prepared Chuck far better for his new life in the CIA than he’d ever guessed. Digital Dave’s team handled some of the most complex security programs across the planet with both force and finesse. Put them in a field and hand them a disc, however, and all of that flew out the window. So did manners, sportsmanship, and any office camaraderie. It was war, plain and simple.

Parmook, another teammate of Chuck’s ran by, panting a little as he did so. Chuck worried about the sheer number of asthmatics in the game, but he’d learned better than to say so. “C’mon, man, why throw to Karminsky? He couldn’t even a catch a thrown error, let alone a Frisbee.”

“I like to give everybody a chance,” Chuck said. Parmook just rubbed him the wrong way. Maybe it was the fact that he’d gone to UC Berkeley. 

Parmook snorted at that. Chuck muttered something less than flattering about Berkeley and went to intercept.

Karminsky, of the famous butterfingers, trotted along beside Chuck, also a little out of breath. They’d had a break in the weather, which meant that July was no longer attempting to strangle them with humidity, but Chuck figured it was only a matter of hours. Still, it was a mostly clear, cool day, and so the twelve nerds were out on a field, enjoying a somewhat-friendly game. 

“Hey, Chuck, why’s the blonde not playing today?” Karminsky asked.

Last time they’d done this, after all, it had been twelve nerds and one spy on a field, enjoying a mostly-friendly game.

“She’s got a name,” Chuck said by reflex. He glanced toward the sidelines where Sarah was sitting on the bleachers, reading a magazine. “And I don’t know. Guess she wasn’t feeling like it.”

“Shame. She’s hot.”

“She’s also a person. You mind?”

“What? Just stating the obvious.”

Chuck decided that since Karminsky couldn’t catch the Frisbee anyway, next time he’d just throw it at the other man’s head and do them all a favor.

Karminsky’s flawless face—he’d been voted the “Most Handsome Man in the Office” at the CIA holiday party, according to Dave—was spared by the fact that eleven cell phones began beeping in unison. Chuck’s own phone buzzed a few seconds later. He checked the message and looked toward Sarah. Since she was still reading her magazine, Dave hadn’t sent her a message, though she did look up when the nerds began to exit the field en masse. Chuck nodded at a few of his teammates and opponents as he went the opposite direction, heading toward the bleachers.

“What’s up?” Sarah asked as he took a seat. 

He picked up the bottle of Gatorade he’d bought from the vending machine before the game. “Some kind of computer emergency in England.”

“What?”

“Somebody tried to hack the Queen’s bank account, I guess. It might’ve been one of us, and they want to contain the problem before MI-6 gets word.”

“Weird.”

“Just how rich is the Queen?” Chuck asked before he swished Gatorade around in his mouth.

Sarah shrugged. “No idea. But I’ll ask her next time I stop by Buckingham Palace for a chat.”

Chuck laughed. “You do that. Make sure to update your Facebook status accordingly.”

“So is Dave too busy to meet with you today? Should we head out?”

“He says to give him fifteen minutes.”

“Only fifteen?”

“Well, yeah. It’s the Queen, not the Tower of London. It’s not like they’re going to lose their heads and forget how to do their jobs.” Sarah shook her head, probably at the horrible pun. Chuck settled in to wait. He’d come to Langley only because he’d done some hacking the night before and he knew that Graham was currently in Southeast Asia, handling some problem or other. Granted, being at Langley was always a danger—who knew if Graham had passed on any of the knowledge of the Lincoln phrases?—but he had the Intersect tattoos. And Sarah still hung around, ostensibly as his bodyguard, though Gwen had told him the government had dropped the necessity of him having Casey or Sarah with him. Ellie had done enough research to let him know that the Lincoln programming, though it did alter Chuck’s reflexes somewhat, wouldn’t take over unless he was given a direct phrase.

Which told Chuck that either Graham was waiting to separate him from Casey and Sarah to have an agent whisper one of the phrases to him, or Graham was still the only one apart from Sarah with that knowledge and wasn’t worried about Chuck at all.

He hoped, sincerely, that it was the latter.

“What the hell,” Sarah said.

Chuck looked up. “What?” He looked about, as that had been real confusion in Sarah’s voice. Had Graham somehow managed to sneak back into Langley? Had aliens finally arrived to seek revenge on the CIA over _Men in Black_ or _Independence Day_ or any of the Will Smith oeuvre?

It turned out to be something far more frightening than aliens.

“What the hell is she doing here?” he asked, real horror in his voice.

Sarah closed her magazine. “I don’t know,” she said.

Carina Miller, now that she’d obviously been spotted, waved merrily at the both of them. She’d dressed for the relatively cool weather in a short skirt and what looked like a men’s dress shirt, which gaped open nearly to her navel and revealed some kind of bikini top beneath.

“Guess we don’t have to ask how she got through security,” Chuck muttered under his breath.

“Hush,” Sarah told him. She stood, and Chuck, because he was sitting so close to her, could see that she was tensed, her stance wary. She stepped from the bleachers to the grass. “Carina! Hey, what are you doing? Here?”

“Such animosity for an old friend,” Carina said, though she was smirking.

Chuck warily rose to his feet, too.

“It wasn’t animosity,” Sarah said. She gave Carina a hug.

“Sure, sure. Whatever. Hi, Bunker Boy.”

“Carina,” Chuck said, nodding a greeting at her and keeping his distance.

“When I say ‘here,’ though, I mean: what are you doing at Langley? You’re not CIA. You shouldn’t have the clearance.”

“Oh, I know a guy.” Carina waved the matter of national security off as though it didn’t matter, and for all Chuck knew, it truly _didn’t_ matter to Carina. “They told me this was where you were, so I thought I’d drop by and see how my best friend and her boyfriend are doing. You _are_ her boyfriend, right, Bunker Boy?”

“We’re friends,” Sarah said.

“Just wondering, but should I clear my schedule?” Chuck asked.

Both women looked at him. “Whatever for?” Carina asked.

“Well, I figure Loki is in town, I should expect a kidnapping at the very least.”

“Aw,” Carina said, and reached out to ruffle Chuck’s hair. He managed not to jerk away, though Sarah gave him a sympathetic look. Everybody on the team knew he had a thing about being touched. “You look better than the last time I saw you. Which isn’t saying much since you were all sweaty and you looked like somebody punched you in both eyes, but hey, now you’re healthy and outside without any trouble.”

“I missed you, too,” Chuck said in a deadpan voice.

“Chin up, Bunker Boy. That was a compliment.”

“Could you give us a minute, Chuck?” Sarah asked, and before Carina or Chuck could say anything about it—luckily—she grabbed Carina’s arm and hauled her friend away. Chuck watched them go before he took his seat on the bleachers again. He picked up Sarah’s magazine and flipped through it. He wrinkled his nose at the proliferation of perfume ads in the middle.

Whatever Sarah was talking to Carina about didn’t take long, as she came back and took her seat next to him again. Carina stayed in the background.

“So,” Chuck said. “I recall that you once said Carina would be back when she felt life was too boring or too predictable. I find life to be neither at the moment, so what’s she doing here?”

“Really?” Sarah asked.

That made him pause for a minute. “Wait, are you bored?”

Sarah shook her head, but the action seemed hurried. “No, it’s not that.”

“So life’s predictable, then?”

“No, no.” Sarah waved that off. “No, she’s just in town because a major op wrapped up and she heard I—we were staying here semi-permanently. She wants to catch up.”

“Oh. That’s nice,” Chuck said. “You should go do that.”

“You sure you don’t want to come?”

“The last time I spent an extended amount of time around Carina, I had a bag over my head for most of the time.”

“So that’s a no.”

“Unless you want me to come?”

“It’s up to you.”

Chuck’s phone buzzed: Dave had text messaged him. He glanced over at Carina; she spotted the look and gave him a little wave. He considered. Did Sarah want him to come? Did she want him to get to know her friend better? She didn’t talk about many people, which he figured had to be part natural reserve and partly due to the fact that the spy life didn’t lead to making many friends. Maybe she wanted him to get to know one of the few friends she had, but that screamed kind of a couple-y activity, and they were only friends, right?

And why the hell did this feel like some kind of test?

“You should go, hang out, paint the town red,” he said, testing the waters just in case it was a test.

Sarah’s expression gave nothing away about the nature of the question. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah. You don’t need me hanging around like some lame fifth wheel, you know? Have some girl time, do whatever it is you spies do. I’ve got to meet with Dave and Russ’ll be at his gym later, and he promised me another boxing lesson if I show up.”

“Okay.” Sarah dug in her purse and handed him her car keys. “Take these.”

“Giving me the keys to the Porsche. You’re a trusting soul.”

“Only because it’s you. I’ll have my cell phone if you need me.”

“Got it.” Chuck let Sarah get a few steps away before he called, just loudly enough for Carina to hear, “Just make sure she doesn’t kidnap you.”

Carina scoffed. “It was _one_ time, Bunker Boy. One time!”

“Have fun,” Chuck called back. “Without ransom notes, preferably!”

Carina gave him the finger. He laughed. Once the women had left, he pulled out his phone and checked the message from Dave. The programmer had a twenty minute window available. Twenty whole minutes? Dave usually only had about five minutes open at a time for hanging out with Chuck.

Chuck headed inside. This sounded serious.

**11 JULY 2008  
CIA CAFETERIA  
11:13 EDT**

“I’m thinking about quitting.”

Chuck, about to reach for a bowl of the rather questionable-looking chili, paused. “Say what?” he asked, turning on the spot to look at Dave.

Dave grabbed the bowl Chuck had been going for. “You heard me,” he said in a low voice, looking about surreptitiously. They were a little early for the lunch rush, so there weren’t too many people nearby. “I said I was thinking about leaving the CIA.”

“Just like that?” Chuck took another bowl and they moved their trays down the rails to the next food station. They were grabbing lunch in the CIA cafeteria, a place Chuck had spent a lot of time—mostly with Sarah—during his last stint in D.C. He had to wonder how many people in the line with them, vying for what looked like truly mediocre food, had a license to kill.

“Well, yeah.” Dave gave him a puzzled look. “It’s not like they make you take a dirt nap if you want to leave the CIA, Chuck.”

 _Speak for yourself_ , Chuck almost said.

“And you know, it’s been coming for awhile.” They shuffled over to the dessert station and were given a choice between watery chocolate pudding and slightly dry pineapple upside down cake. Chuck went with the pineapples. “Kaylee’s six now. You know how many of her birthday parties I’ve managed to make it through without being interrupted by work?”

“Two?” Chuck asked.

“You optimist.” Dave grabbed the chocolate pudding for himself and they moved to the pay station. Once Chuck had paid for both of their meals, at his own insistence, they found a table out of the way of most of the room. Dave set his tray down and immediately reached for one of his two Red Bulls. “I can’t keep doing this anymore, Chuck. Budget cuts mean they won’t hire anybody else, and I’m missing too much of my life. I can make three times as much in the private sector.”

“You’ll probably have to work just as much, you know,” Chuck said. “Especially near deadlines.”

“Depends, I guess. The minute I mention maybe leaving the CIA to anybody but you—and by the way, if you tell anybody about this conversation…”

“Dave, I won’t say a word. Trust me, Sarah and I both owe you. This is the least I could do.”

“Okay. Whew.” Dave swigged some Red Bull and relaxed, sagging back against the hard plastic of the cafeteria chair behind him. “The thing is, the minute I even _hint_ at thinking about getting out of the CIA, the bidding war begins. All of the big firms are going to court me.”

“That’s awesome, though.” Chuck dug into the questionable chili and found out that it wasn’t as disgusting as he’d thought it would be. He took another bite. “Do you not want that?”

“I don’t know.” Dave tapped his fingers on the table, obviously agitated. “It’s flattering, of course, but…”

“What do you want to do, then?”

“Not security,” Dave said.

Chuck looked up. “That’s where you made your mark.” 

“I know. But don’t you get tired of the cloak and dagger?”

Chuck thought about the hours of constant vigilance, of being wary that in public, a stranger might come up to him and whisper a phrase that would make him forget everything and turn him into something else. The hours spent wondering if there was more to the Lincoln Project than he’d been able to discover in the Bunker. The days of freaking out about whether he would snap or not, even if Ellie had proved he wouldn’t using her weird brand of brain science.

“You have no idea,” was all he said to Dave.

“So why not do it?”

“Do what?”

“Leave the CIA. We’ll get out, get away from this Fulcrum problem, and we can start our own business together.”

“What would we do?”

“A startup. It’d be fun.”

“You realize that doing a startup means the hours will be brutal, right?” Chuck asked, though he could actually feel his stomach jumping with excitement, real excitement at the first time in weeks. His life had stretched away in front of him, a lonely existence in a mountain home, cut off from the world.

Maybe he didn’t _have_ to live in the mountains. Maybe if he was careful…

“Yeah, they’ll be brutal,” Dave said. “But only for a little while, while we get it off the ground.”

“Get _what_ off the ground?”

“I was thinking about a virtual gaming website.”

“Dave, I’m not a game programmer.”

“No, no, no, we wouldn’t be writing the games.” Dave pushed his own bowl of chili aside, the better to gesticulate excitedly. “It’d be refactoring only, making them available for any platform. You know how much is online these days. Cloud storage, online streaming. There’s a real opportunity to do the same with games.”

“What kind of games?”

“Any kind. Classic, first person shooter, Sega, Playstation, GameBoy, you name it. We offer them all. Maybe on a tiered platform, whatever, I haven’t given that part any thought. But you and I, working together, we could do it.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” Chuck said.

“When I started at the CIA, I didn’t have a family. I wasn’t even expecting to have one. But now I do, and this Fulcrum thing like it is: it’s not good.”

Chuck’s stomach pitched. “Is it really that bad? Has there been any movement with all of the stuff Ezersky gave you in February?” He’d heard that the Russian toymaker had been retired early by the CIA and was spending his days on a remote island, probably making more scary roborabbits. 

“They’re like a hydra,” Dave said, looking down. “Every time we find out one thing about them, I think three more new things spring up. And I don’t know anything for sure, but I think they’re planning something big. I’m a patriot, yes, but Fulcrum, it goes so deep and sooner or later, they’re going to come after my family, Chuck. I need to get out. I want you to come with me.”

Chuck thought of the contract he’d signed, how he’d agreed to do work as the Intersect while he had the newest version in his head. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Oh.” Dave’s face fell. But he straightened, looking both ways for eavesdroppers, and leaned forward. Chuck wanted to tell him to quit it, that by trying to avoid looking suspicious, he was only drawing attention. But instead he leaned in, too, and Dave said, “I’ve been working on my time off on some killer virtualization tech that makes the bandwidth we’d need for these games infinitesimal. In-fin-itesimal, Chuck. If I can tweak this right, it’ll make the interface usable on lower powered devices.”

“You’re talking cell phones?” Chuck asked, his brain racing.

“Cell phones. And the faster the networks get, the faster we’ll get. Imagine it for a minute.”

He allowed himself a scarce moment of daydreaming before reality butted back in. With a sigh, he leaned back. “Dave, I signed a contract. There’s mitigating circumstances I can’t control or change.”

“Oh.”

“But…” Chuck put the rest of his chili aside and reached for the cake. “I can fund it.”

“What? You and what millionaire?”

“Me and myself, the millionaire.”

Dave blinked. “Get out. Are you rich?”

“I’m not Bruce Wayne, but I do okay.”

“Dude, that means nothing to me. Bruce Wayne isn’t even Bruce Wayne.”

“True.” Chuck laughed, with genuine humor. “If you want out, Dave, I will pay for this business. And I can even help, even if I’m not one hundred percent free.”

“Deal,” Dave said. “Frell yes! Deal, so hard deal.” He extended his hand across the table.

Chuck shook it, oddly relieved. Now his life, he thought, actually had something in it besides his family and the CIA. “Deal,” he said. “Now we just have to…”

He trailed off as he realized it had gone quiet in the cafeteria, like a wave of silence passing over the tables. Something froze between his shoulder blades and made dread begin to nibble at his spinal column.

Slowly, he turned.

“Is this seat taken?” Langston Graham asked.

**11 JULY 2008  
THE OFFICE OF LANGSTON GRAHAM  
12:21 EDT**

Chuck heard the door click shut behind him and tried to pretend like the noise wasn’t ominous or portentous of doom or any sort of thing like that, but he couldn’t quite convince himself. Still, he forced himself to move forward, knowing that this was a bad idea. Never mind that he wore jeans and a maroon T-shirt in the office of the Director of the CIA—he really just had been by Langley to visit Dave, not in a professional capacity—but that he was now alone behind a closed door with the man who’d not only commissioned him to become a monster, but knew all of the phrases to control him as well.

Somewhere, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Han Solo had a bad feeling about this.

“Relax, Chuck.” Graham sat down behind his desk, a massive, mahogany number that Chuck imagined would fit well in any politician’s office. It was covered in a discreet number of file folders, and of course the classic bronzed globe of the planet sat on the corner. “I promise you, I won’t be activating any of your Lincoln characteristics today. Have a seat.”

“I prefer to stand,” Chuck said, wanting very much to move the bracelet Sarah had given him up his wrist. He didn’t want to expose the tattoos to Graham, though, unless he absolutely had to. “You requested a meeting. Per the terms of my contract, you have five minutes. I’d start talking if I were you.”

Graham smiled. Chuck imagined that many sharks had sported that same smile over the years. He straightened his shoulders imperceptibly.

“Very well,” Graham said. “Since we don’t have much time, I’ll keep this brief. We’re uploading the new Intersect into a group of candidates tonight. You’re on the list.”

“What list?”

“The list of candidates to get the new Intersect. You’re to report to the DNI at 2100 hours.”

Chuck was sure something between his ear canal and his brain’s logic center had broken and he wasn’t really hearing what he was hearing. He blinked. “Like hell I will.”

“Language, Bartowski.”

“My apologies, Director. I meant fuck no.”

Graham chuckled.

Chuck still couldn’t believe that he was hearing this. “In which universe would I ever do that, _sir_? The first one that was put in my head—against my consent—has caused enough problems, thanks.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Graham said, rising to his feet. He came around the desk, leaned back against it, and crossed his arms over his chest. “This isn’t a request, Bartowski. You will be downloading the new Intersect, make no mistake.”

“My contract doesn’t cover that.”

“No. It doesn’t. However, I can’t in good conscience allow you to run around without the latest Intersect upgrade in your head.” 

Which would keep him employed by the CIA and NSA for a whole hell of a lot longer, Chuck knew. He was only stuck in indentured servitude—well, as much indentured servitude as the eleven million dollars he didn’t really want could ensure—while he had the latest version of the Intersect. Uploading the new version would keep him under the government’s thumb a lot longer.

“After all,” Graham said, as Chuck began to feel the fury creeping up from his toes. It was the same numbing, all-encompassing feeling of rage Bryce had inspired. It made Chuck want to leap at the other man and just start swinging. “Who knows how long the old Intersect will keep your Lincoln instincts at bay?”

That one drew Chuck up short. “What?”

“They spent two years training you to a killing precision, Bartowski. Powerful subliminal and hypnotic training. And you think one beta test of an Intersect is going to keep that from overpowering your system, _and_ keep you from snapping like a twig? I hardly think so.”

“But Ellie said…” Ellie had said that he wasn’t in danger of snapping, that the only way Lincoln could overpower him was if a phrase was used. She had been very specific about that. He straightened up again and glared hard at Graham. “That’s not possible. Sir.” The last was said with a sneer.

“Think hard, Chuck. Would your sister tell you the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Really? You don’t think she has a greater interest in keeping you from running away again? Easier to conceal a minor fact and keep you here, isn’t it?”

“She wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Are you positive about that? After all, she didn’t tell you about the programming forcing you to run, did she?”

“How the hell do you know that?” The instant the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. He’d shown his hand. Carefully, he pushed his astonishment behind a poker face.

“I’m the Director of the CIA, Chuck. When I want to know something, I know it. Like I know that neither Agent Walker nor Dr. Bartowski told you that you were preconditioned to run when your orders were complete, though both had multiple opportunities. If they lied to you about that, what else could they be lying about?”

Denial rose, sharp and hard. “You’re trying to get in my head,” Chuck said. “It won’t work.”

“I’m merely pointing out facts you may have missed. Nobody is safe while you are what you are, Chuck. It’s your civic duty to protect everybody from yourself.”

“It’s my _civic_ duty to live my life as I see fit,” Chuck said.

“And put countless Americans in danger by refusing to take preventative measures?” Graham shifted his stance, the picture of ease and idleness.

“I _have_ taken preventative measures. I’ve got your precious Intersect in my skull, I watch my back, I see a therapist twice a week. I don’t need a new Intersect, and I think you know that.” His face was burning, Chuck realized. He could only hope he wasn’t flushed red in anger like he suspected he was. “With all due respect, sir, butt out.”

He spun on his heel and headed for the door. Everybody knew you didn’t dismiss yourself from the director’s office, that you waited until you were dismissed, but Chuck couldn’t have cared less about that had he tried. His hands were shaking as he shoved the door open and stormed out. Some part of him almost hoped that Graham sent people after him, as he would really, really love to punch somebody at the moment. Preferably Graham, but he found he wasn’t terribly picky.

“2100 hours, Bartowski,” Graham called after him, and it was all Chuck could do not to turn and give the Director of the CIA the finger, like Carina had done to him earlier.

He settled on leaving. Even if he wanted to punch somebody in the face, it wasn’t worth it to risk people trying to arrest him again. Sarah would be pissed if she had to break up her girls’ day out with Carina to break him out of jail.

Nobody followed him out of the CIA. If he had been any less pissed off, he would have considered that a win.

**11 JULY 2008  
GOLDWYN’S GYM  
15:45 EDT**

“Something on your mind, Chuck?” Russ Davenport asked in that mild way he had of asking huge questions.

Chuck repeated the combo Russ had been teaching him with a little more force than necessary. He was surprised Russ had even brought it up. Russ’s preferred method of therapy was simply to remain quiet until Chuck spilled whatever was on his mind, usually so hurriedly that the words came tumbling over one another in a jumbled mess.

“My boss is a jackass,” he said, hitting the combo again.

“Remember to breathe,” Russ said. “I thought you liked your boss. Sort of.”

“Different boss. Different jackass. Whatever.” He was still so furious that his vision got jittery whenever he thought about it too much. Graham wanted him to upload the new Intersect. Graham had made insinuations that Ellie was lying to him. Graham had made insinuations that he was a monster.

He wasn’t a monster. He was a human being.

Of course, he’d called himself a monster once. More than once. Quite a few times, and there was always that fear that he really would snap and some innocent people would pay for it with their lives, so if Ellie was concealing the truth to keep him—he hit the bag harder.

“Whoa, there,” Russ said, jerking the bag away and throwing off Chuck’s rhythm. Chuck stumbled forward, bashing his chin against the bag.

It hurt. He swore.

“Maybe take a drink,” Russ said.

“Yeah.” Chuck rubbed his chin and reached for the bottle of water. He dumped some of it on his face. It didn’t cool him off much, but it was enough. “Sorry. Just mad.”

“You want to talk about it?”

Chuck thought it over. “In six hours, it won’t matter.”

“Then I recommend not letting it rent any room in your head. C’mon, try the combo again. Watch your pacing and your breathing.”

“Okay.”

He’d been coming to Goldwyn’s gym, which was old and slightly grody and smelled like gym socks, ever since they’d arrived back in D.C. and Gwen had suggested he could use more activities to avoid laying in bed all day staring at the ceiling. Russ liked the gym; it was located in the heart of D.C., in among the trendy shops and recruitment offices, not far from the Smithsonian museums and all of the other tourist places. People tended to walk right by this little hole in the wall gym, though, which made it the perfect place for Russ to continue giving Chuck boxing lessons, just like he had during the team’s first jaunt in D.C. Casey usually tagged along, as he liked beating on the heavy bags at the “real man’s gym,” too, but Casey had declared today a holiday.

Chuck was on his own. So he tried to keep his anger in check, and to listen to Russ as the other man patiently corrected his hand placement—Chuck sometimes forgot to protect his face—and reminded him to breathe. Soon, Chuck had almost managed to take some of Russ’s advice to heart. He couldn’t quite get past Graham’s words, though.

Ellie wouldn’t lie to him. Granted, there had been that odd moment, just the one, while they’d talked about the Lincoln instincts about leaving. But that didn’t mean anything. That didn’t mean she was hiding evidence about his mental condition from him.

There had to be another explanation. There was. It was his sister.

 _Sarah lied to you once_ , his brain whispered. _You trusted her, too_.

“Here, let’s switch to working on uppercuts,” Russ said, and Chuck shook his head, trying to push the voice as far away as he possibly could. “That’s the ‘I’ve got a good mad on’ punch anyway, might as well stop fighting it.”

The uppercut really was a therapeutic punch. Twenty minutes later, they wrapped up their session, and Chuck had managed to shake the voices. Russ asked if he was okay only once more.

“I’m fine,” Chuck said.

“You ever need anything, you let me know, got it?” Russ asked. “Whatever it is.”

That helped rid the rest of Graham’s evil cobwebs from Chuck’s brain. “I will do that,” Chuck said. “Thanks, Russ.” 

He showered off the rank stench of their session, threw his work-out clothes in a gym bag, and headed for the outside. Parking was sparse around the gym, since it was in the heart of everything, so he’d parked the Porsche a couple of Metro stops down. It gave him a chance to enjoy the afternoon and the crowds of tourists that were also relaxing in the break from the onslaught of a D.C. summer. He debated stopping by the store on his way home to pick up a new game, which made him think of Dave and the business proposal.

It was halfway there that he realized something: if Graham uploaded the new Intersect into a bunch of new agents, Chuck was off the hook. He could join Dave in the business venture with more than funding.

He could actually have a job that wasn’t anything to do with the CIA.

Real excitement flooded through him, riding on something that he realized he hadn’t felt in a long time: a sense of freedom.

Of course, _of course_ , it was then that he realized something else.

He was being followed.


	63. Witness Protection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Freedom comes from strength and self-reliance. — _Lisa Murkowski_

**11 JULY 2008  
WASHINGTON D.C. (IN FRONT OF A YOGURT SHOP)  
16:12 EDT**

His first thoughts—that he was being paranoid, that he was hallucinating—was a complete wash. The minute he slowed, the three men behind him did the same. One man halfway down the block ahead of him looked up and quickly away. A fifth man across the street pretended to be far too interested in a copy of the _Post_. Casey would have scowled at that.

Casey would have also scowled at the fact that all five men wore lightweight jackets. Even though it was cooler than the previous day, Chuck was walking around in shorts and a T-shirt, like most of the tourists around him. Five men in jackets stood out like a sore thumb, which told him two things: his pursuers were packing, and they didn’t care about being discreet.

Panic rose, but only for a split second. The day went cold, crystal clear focus sliding over his vision. It was a gift to be aware of his Lincoln training, for he could identify every egress point and escape route in a matter of seconds.

The problem was that there were five of them and only one of him. He could calculate the odds of getting away cleanly, and they were only twelve percent in his favor. The longer he kept the guys following him on his own terms, the better his chances of getting away were. Even better than that, he needed to get to some place crowded and public. That was the first thing Sarah had taught him in her lessons about how to lose a tail.

He changed route and headed for the Federal Triangle area. He switched his duffel to his left hand, leaving his right hand free to defend or attack, depending. As he did so, he pushed the button on his watch. 

His next act was to reach for his cell phone and hit speed dial for Sarah’s number.

The call didn’t connect.

Chuck checked a window display as he was going by, using the mirroring properties in the shop’s glass to check out his followers. One of them must have a cell phone jammer. “Dammit.” Casey and Sarah wouldn’t be picking up on his watch beacon, either. If they knew to block his cell, they’d know to block his watch. Which meant Graham had sent them. They likely had training. But if they’d come from Graham, they needed Chuck whole, mostly in one piece, and ready to be taken to the DNI to upload the Intersect.

Without, hopefully, letting them know he was onto them, he headed into an open-aired shop that sold cheap, touristy knickknacks and odds and ends. It was crawling with tourists and had multiple exits, and he could hear Sarah’s patient instructor voice telling him that this was ideal. If he could just get out the other side, he’d have a little more leeway.

He nearly tripped over a mother and her two toddlers, one of whom was covered in what looked like some kind of red syrup. “Sorry—sorry—”

The mother gave him a dirty look. Chuck, about to apologize again, spotted one of the men following him coming in the entrance and cursed under his breath. He sidled away through the racks of postcards.

The man followed him. Desperate and trying to hide it, Chuck looked for a weapon, any weapon, among the curios and _I Love D.C._ coffee mugs. His eyes fell on the rack in the corner, toward the door on the opposite side of the shop. He gave one wincing apology to his masculinity and headed over, taking time to make it look like he was actively, if insistently, shopping. When he reached the rack, he spun it around, pretending interest. It only took about five seconds—five long, interminable seconds—of keeping his head before the man approached, one hand inside his jacket.

Chuck counted under his breath, dropped the duffel, and turned. The man cursed as he received a face full of Strawberry Sparkle Body Spray.

“Sorry,” Chuck said to the world, and shoved the man into a table full of folded up T-shirts. He sprinted for the exit. He couldn’t tell if the crashing noises behind him were the man recovering or surprised tourists, but he wasn’t going to waste time looking over his shoulder to find out. He exploded out into the sunlight again, already in mid-turn. He tripped, went down to a knee, and scrambled to his feet. 

“Police! Freeze!”

The Lincoln senses informed him of the number of people around, most of them startled and confused. It also informed him that there was a man on the sidewalk about eight feet away with his gun out to his right, standing in a perfect isosceles stance.

Chuck froze.

Police? What the hell? The men trailing after him couldn’t be cops. They had to have been sent by Graham. His watch and his phone weren’t working, and cops didn’t have jammers, not for tracking regular civilians. And it made no sense of cops to be following him, anyway. He didn’t break the law—unless it was CIA-sanctioned. Slowly, he turned in place, hands held aloft. The cop was pointing a taser at him. Chuck almost preferred a pistol. At least that way this guy wouldn’t be able to fire into the crowd if Chuck chose to run.

What the hell was going on?

“Hands on your head!” the cop said, and two of his buddies came around the corner to join him on the other side of the tourist shop with Chuck.

Chuck obeyed, warily. There was still the sound of swearing and confusion from inside the tourist shop, which accounted for the fourth man, but where was the fifth? Why had they sent five cops to track him? Only one had a taser out, but he could see the glints of silver at their waistbands: their badges.

“Up against the wall!”

He could see people in the crowd going for their camera phones to record this: understandable, given that most people had never witnessed somebody getting arrested in person. Still, it would be a mess for Beckman’s people to clean up. And maybe Casey and Sarah might see him on YouTube and know where he was if he didn’t get a phone call. He kept his head down, even so, while the second cop came up behind him.

“Don’t try anything, Carmichael,” the cop said, and Chuck realized that he wasn’t getting that phone call. “The boss wants you whole, but he didn’t say anything about being nice.”

“Which boss are we talking about?” Chuck asked, feeling a droplet of cold sweat slide under the collar of his shirt. He knew this was Graham’s doing, knew in a sudden bout of clarity that Graham may have let him walk out of the office that afternoon, but he had truly never let Chuck get away, nor would he.

“You know exactly which boss we’re talking about,” the man said, and Chuck heard the damning _click_ of the handcuffs closing around his wrists. In a louder voice, the man said, “Charles Carmichael, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent.”

And while he went through the whole Miranda speech—which was truly worthless, as Chuck knew now that the man was definitely not a cop—the others who had been tailing Chuck worked to disperse the crowd. Chuck was forced to keep facing the wall, even as his thoughts raced.

Why had he thought Graham wouldn’t leave this alone? Why hadn’t he told Casey? Or Sarah? Why had he just assumed that would be the end of it?

They were going to put another Intersect in his head. They were going to enslave him for forever.

“Come along,” the “cop” who’d threatened to taser him said. “You’ve got a meeting to get to.”

It was childish, and also probably something he and Morgan had talked about doing as teens, but Chuck hawked a loogie at him. He took the short-armed punch to the gut with a grunt of pain and a philosophy that it had been worth it, before he was marched off, down the street.

**11 JULY 2008  
METRO STATION  
16:30 EDT**

They hadn’t loaded him into the back of an unmarked van, or even a police car. With every step, Chuck felt the paranoia and confusion grow. He was marched down the street, flanked by two men, with another walking point, another trailing behind, forming a cage around him. They’d handed his watch and cell phone off to the man he’d sparkle-sprayed in the face, which meant Sarah and Casey had no way of tracking him, even if they were to pick up on the fact that he was missing. 

They led him down the steps to the Metro, flashing their badges to get past the gates and into the station. By this point, Chuck was more than confused; he was absolutely at sea and without a clue as to what could be going on. What was their endgame? Why take him there?

He soon found out. A quick hop on the orange line away—just two or three stops—and he was marched off the train, taken across the platform, and pushed through a service door tucked out of the way. He made sure to look directly at every single camera he could find, giving each a clear profile of his face, until the guard behind him noticed and shoved his head down.

Chuck took great pleasure out of stumbling and causing three of them to stumble as well.

The service door opened into a narrow, damp hallway that smelled of molder and oil and was lit, of course, by a classic horror movie staple: the single flickering bulb. “Nice digs,” Chuck said. “Really, I like the ambience. Though I always thought wherever I died, it’d be a little more cheerful.”

“Shut up,” the man he’d spat on said. During the march, Chuck had taken to calling him Señor Saliva. Even now, he wasn’t surprised at the response. Every time he’d tried to speak, he’d received a version of “Be quiet.” The one time he’d tried to appeal to another civilian, they’d stepped on his foot and punched him in the stomach.

Maybe Chuck would show up in a cell phone video about police brutality online and that was how Casey and Sarah would find him. It was a long shot.

The hallway led to a set of stairs. Chuck felt panic mount, but he had no choice but to go forward, the soles of his chucks scratching loudly against the dusty tiles. “I really like your interior decorator. Excellent use of space.”

No response from the thug squad.

“Not very feng shui, though. Maybe you should bring somebody down here, let them get a look at that? It’s really all about how you manage the space, I’ve found and—”

“Oh, my God,” said one of the two men who hadn’t spoken yet. He turned angrily toward Señor Saliva. “I hope the boss paid you in advance because if he doesn’t shut the hell up, I’m going to turn around and shoot him, I don’t care _what_ he’s worth.”

“Shoot me where?” Chuck asked.

Saliva ignored him. “We’re almost there, Patterson. Then we put him in the cell and wait. He’ll be the CIA’s problem soon.”

“Where were you going to shoot me?” Chuck asked Patterson. “This is important. See, my friend—well, she’s kind of my girlfriend, kind of not, we have this whole will-they-won’t-they bit going that seems kind of cute on TV until you live the real thing, but either way, that’s not important. What I was trying to say is that there are parts of me—well, all of me, really, if you want to get down to the nitty-gritty—that she won’t want you to shoot and—why are you taking off your tie? You’re not going to garrote me, are you? I saw the end of _Lethal Weapon Four_ and I really, really didn’t like it, and not just because—oh, God.”

Patterson balled his tie up and shoved it into Chuck’s mouth. Chuck gagged over the taste of silk. He was proud of himself, though, that he didn’t make it easy for the man to circle behind him and tie the neckwear off into a suitable gag.

That was, until Saliva punched him in the stomach again. Chuck was finding it harder and harder to take those hits philosophically.

Saliva hadn’t been wrong; it was only about fifty feet up the corridor that there was an alcove and a door. Chuck was shoved through this. Beyond it lay a small, square room with an ancient mini-fridge and coffeemaker in one corner. They had to move around a table to get through another door. Chuck was promptly pushed through this, and the door closed behind him.

It really was a cell. Underneath the Washington D.C. Metro station, there was a holding cell and a waiting room. It was just his freaking luck. He tried to swear through the gag—which was uncomfortably tight and tasted disgusting—but all that came out was, “Mmph.”

Dammit. He couldn’t even swear properly.

**11 JULY 2008  
METRO STATION  
17:23 EDT**

Chuck scoured every inch of the room for cameras, hidden, or otherwise, but there wasn’t anything inside he could use. It was a room with cinderblock walls that had peeled and yellowed with age and a concrete floor so cold that it had burned. It smelled like dust, which of course made him sneeze. But there weren’t any cameras and Saliva’s crew seemed too annoyed with him to give him much credit and check on him. Chuck, once panic had subsided and clarity had come back, had begun to count the various intervals. No check-in at ten minutes, none at fifteen, thirty, forty-five. It was coming up on an hour, and they would need to move him to the DNI headquarters soon. And there really was no hope of either Casey or Sarah finding him or even knowing he was gone, so if he wanted to get out of there, he had to do it himself. The old version of him would have despaired.

At least Carver and Kohl had taught him one thing: sometimes help didn’t come. Sometimes it was up to him.

When an hour passed, Chuck decided he’d waited long enough. It was an interesting study in flexibility and pain to lie down and maneuver his handcuffed hands from behind him to in front of him. He swore through the gag, cursing the genetics that had led to his freakishly long legs and ridiculously gangly build, which came in handy during intramural sports but not during extracurricular jail-breaking. By the time he had his hands in front of him and working at the gag, he was sweating. He whipped the tie off and let out a gasp, his first real deep breath in over an hour.

“That’s it. I am never wearing a tie again.”

After all, he was a millionaire now. That meant he could be eccentric enough to pull it off.

With the gag off, he could think more clearly. He assessed the situation again, hoping for more insight. Five guys, one away doing things with his watch and his cell phone, probably at an arcade somewhere. What he would say if somebody actually called Chuck’s phone—Chuck’s teammates, after all, were understandably paranoid—Chuck had no idea, but he’d worry about that later. Another member of the group was doing patrols of the station, probably, in case Sarah or Casey had twigged to Chuck’s disappearance. This meant that outside this door, at best, there were three guys and a long run between him and freedom. Even if he got past them, he’d have to face down another, possibly two, in the station.

Unless…

These tunnels seemed old. And where better to have a secret underground system of tunnels than where some of the highest ranking political officials in the country lived? Surely there had to be a secret map somewhere.

Somewhere? This was a job for the Intersect.

He’d forced himself to flash a couple of times before he’d run away in February. After that, however, he’d honed the skill. Maps of Barcelona, Seville, even a satellite map of the tiny town in Poland he’d spent the night in while on the run between Seville and Siberia had proven useful on the run. Now, he closed his eyes and brought to mind as many images as he could of the Metro—the brightly-lined maps of the different trains, the station signs, even the pattern of the tracks, the door he’d been pushed through into the tunnel, the tunnel itself—hoping that something would trip the image recognition software in his brain.

It took thirty seconds, but finally, he flashed. Of course, he flashed on every single map of the tunnels running along, beside, over, and under the Metro system, and they hit him all at once. It felt as though somebody had lovingly removed the top of his skull and had applied a ball peen hammer straight to the pink matter.

He let out a strangled scream.

“What the—” The curses and surprises on the other side of the door made him jump. It was too soon; he didn’t even have a set plan yet. He fought off the flash hangover, grabbed the tie, and headed for the door. He’d have to improvise and if he couldn’t see out, they couldn’t see in. That could only be to his advantage. He grabbed his only weapon—the tie—and tried not to be grossed out by the fact that it was covered in his own saliva from when it had been used as a gag.

 _Breathe_. This time it was Russ’s voice, not Casey’s, that he heard in his head. That was almost comforting. He took a deep breath, and the door opened.

If forced to admit it later, Chuck would claim no pride in what he did next. The minute Patterson stepped inside, Taser up as he searched the room, Chuck flicked the tie at him like a fratboy with a towel. Given that the spit had weighted it down nicely, it made a satisfying crack as it snapped against Patterson’s leg.

“Ow!”

Chuck dropped the tie and drove his knee into Patterson’s midsection. He heard something clatter, but he didn’t care. He swung upward with both hands, as they were still handcuffed together. It ended up being the world’s most awkward two-handed uppercut, and it hurt his hands, but not as much as it would have without the boxing lessons.

Patterson went down like a stone.

Instinct made Chuck swoop and grab whatever it was that Patterson had dropped: the taser. It slipped out of his grip—either the sweat or the spit, he couldn’t tell. He bent again to grab it, knowing they were coming, knowing there were at least two of them left, that he had to hurry.

Something over his head crackled like a Tesla coil.

Chuck, startled, fell back, landing on his butt. Standing in the doorway was Señor Saliva, once again in an isosceles stance, hands wrapped around a taser. Chuck blinked. Saliva blinked.

As one, they looked behind Chuck, at the two taser prongs twitching uselessly on the concrete floor. Saliva swore. Chuck didn’t bother with that luxury. He fell sideways onto his hands and kicked off the floor with his feet, swinging his body around like a pinwheel and knocking the legs out from under Saliva. The other man immediately moved to get back up. Chuck tased him. 

And to think he’d said the break-dancing lessons Morgan had made them take at the community center when they were fourteen would never pay off. He owed his friend an apology.

He’d apologize later. Right now, there were two down, one to go. He was still handcuffed, the taser spent, and there was a guy on the other side of the door waiting to do exactly the same thing to Chuck that Chuck had done to Saliva, who was twitching like a landed fish.

Warily, he peeked around the corner and was drawn up short: the room was empty. Where had the third man gone? The man wasn’t hiding the under the table, the only place in the room it was possible to hide. Saliva was going to regain motor control soon. Time to go, Chuck thought. He wasted precious seconds fumbling through Patterson’s pockets, nearly fainting in relief when he found the handcuff key. And then, knowing his luck was running out, he ran.

He turned left, going away from the Metro station, and booked it, since the corridor was straight for nearly a quarter of a mile and Saliva would be coming out of the cell at any second. Every step between the alcove and the first turn—as they would suspect him to go back to the station—felt like an eternity.

When he finally, finally rounded the corner, he nearly stopped right there, to lean back against the wall and catch his breath, let the adrenaline settle a little. He didn’t dare. Fear and paranoia drove him forward. The tunnels were creepy, but almost…homey. Maybe the government bought those kinds of light in bulk; the same ones had lit his bunker. He was far more comfortable, knowing that, than he should have been in the tunnels.

And that was exactly why he had to get out of there. He couldn’t afford to be comfortable. Resolutely, he upped his pace. He’d get to the Metro station, find some way to contact Casey and Sarah, and they’d go from there. If he could hold off for just a few more hours, he wouldn’t be the newest Intersect anymore, and he would be free.

**11 JULY 2008  
METRO STATION  
17:49 EDT**

The mystery of the missing third man solved itself.

Chuck peeked through the service door and into the heart of the metro station, which was of course crowded due to the fact that it was a rush hour on a Wednesday. Men and women in suits and professional attire milled around, waiting to get onto the trains that would whisk them to the outskirts of the D.C. area and to their dinners and families. Chuck waited, crouched behind a service door that led to a janitorial closet and the tunnels, and watched them go by. He wore a work-shirt he’d found in the closet instead of his Artoo Detoo tee. The nametag said Steve and it smelled faintly of lemon polish.

It wasn’t nearly enough of a disguise, not when he wore cargo shorts and chucks, but every little bit helped. The fact that he’d ripped up his knee and blood was still trickling past the paper towel he’d put on it to stanch the flow didn’t help.

Which was why, when the third man appeared in the crowd, holding take-out and looking around frantically, he swore. The fourth man probably hadn’t left the first Metro station, but he really hadn’t expected to find any of them at this station already.

There was no way he wouldn’t be spotted. Should he head back into the tunnels? He’d lucked out between the two stations in that he hadn’t run into anybody. He wasn’t under any illusions: these were tunnels under the nation’s capital, where the hoi polloi of the political set lived. There would be guards eventually. And if those guards got him, Graham would know immediately and the cycle would start all over again.

He’d have to wait it out in the doorway.

A train pulled onto the platform, and passengers shuffled on. Most of them were busy looking down at their smartphones or their books, as this was just part of the daily grind. Graham’s man walked beside the train, checking through every car, jostling those that were waiting on the platform. He was heading away from Chuck, walking down the line, and there might be _just_ enough time…

Unlike when he’d visited Ellie and had wondered if he could make it cleanly to his car, only to get caught, Chuck didn’t think. The minute Graham’s man was far enough down the line of cars, he darted free of the door, raced across the platform, and threw himself between the doors just before they closed. He heard them whisper shut behind him and unceremoniously dropped to the ground, head down. The rush hour commuters didn’t even spare him a second look. 

After a few seconds, Chuck realized that he should probably have a reason for being on the ground and belatedly began to retie his shoe. He turned his back toward the platform and peeked under his arm. Had Graham’s man spotted him and gotten on the train with him? 

No, he was on the platform. And as the train rushed by, there was no look of recognition, no sign that he’d seen Chuck.

Chuck felt like collapsing into a boneless pile of relief on the spot.

He hadn’t gotten away yet, he knew. This was just another nerve-wracking step. Señor Saliva wouldn’t have been out of commission long from the taser, and he’d have at least his own men combing the metro system for Chuck. And if he contacted Graham, there would be more than that. Though Chuck wasn’t sure Saliva _would_ contact Graham, he couldn’t take that risk.

Which meant he had to get somewhere safe and wait it out. Once the other agents had the Intersect, he was home free. But until then, he couldn’t approach his home, Ellie’s home, or Sarah’s. They would expect him at all three locations, and they’d have somebody waiting there for each of them. Especially at Ellie’s place because Sarah was off with Carina and Ellie wouldn’t know how to spot somebody watching the house.

It made him sick, but they wanted him and not Ellie. And as long as he kept out of their grasp, there was no reason to threaten Ellie. But it also meant he couldn’t contact anybody. No way Graham wasn’t eavesdropping on those conversations.

At the next station, he disembarked and headed straight for the street. He had his wallet and about two hundred in cash, but his credit and debit cards were useless. One swipe anywhere and they would be able to find them. He almost felt bad as he handed both to one of the homeless vets hanging out by the entrance. “Buy yourself a good meal, and if anybody asks, I went that way,” he told the man, and headed in the direction that he’d pointed. The minute he was out of the man’s sight, he turned the corner and doubled back. He hopped a bus two blocks later.

The next hour was spent hopping from bus to Metro to bus while he thought about what to do. He stopped at a store and sacrificed some money for a new set of jeans and a shirt with a picture of all of the memorials on it, but only after his knee had stopped bleeding. After that, he caught a cab to a bus stop and the routine started again. 

He searched through his wallet for anything that might lead to an escape. He pulled out the printed clippings from the _Washington Post_ : Orion’s messages to him. Orion could take the Intersect out, could end the government’s dependence on Chuck completely. If, Chuck thought, he was telling the truth. And if Sarah and Ellie believed that Lincoln could be removed, maybe Orion could remove Lincoln as well. Provided Orion was who he said he was and that his motives were benevolent. 

He had the clippings stored in chronological order, from the first one that appeared on May 28th, an advertisement for a pretty common Optimus Prime action figure that a man was trying to sell for his kid. The thing that had drawn his attention had been that the action figure could be found in a store that was at the intersection of Arrow Street and Hunter Drive. It wasn’t the most subtle thing on the planet, but it had been enough. The toy had been a hint, too. Chuck had combed the online personal archives of the _Post_ until he’d realized that the messages to contact Orion only came on prime-numbered days.

Chuck gave thought to calling him right then on the number he’d decoded from the ads. He could test the other man, solve at least his problems with the Intersect, at least. He decided against it. He’d survived for three months evading the government. He could handle three more hours. With that in mind, he switched bus routes again and wondered if it was safe to approach the Porsche. They might be watching it.

There were a few people they wouldn’t be watching, he knew. Digital Dave would help him, especially if Chuck stressed that this would get them both free of government manacles. But Dave had a family and Chuck didn’t really want to just show up on his doorstep. That was crossing a line. His teammates were off the table. Bryce was just a no-go, even if Chuck had known how to get in contact with him. That bridge was well and truly burned.

Gwen might be able to protect him. She’d certainly pulled off some gutsy moves in the past to keep him safe. But like Dave, she was at home with her kids and Russ—

No, wait, Russ was working late at his D.C. office. He’d made an offhand comment that afternoon during their session at the gym about a difficult client that would require him to stay late that evening, finishing up the specs on “the dining room from hell.”

It was a distant enough connection. They’d expect him to go straight to Sarah or Gwen. Russ was a civilian.

Chuck took a chance and disembarked at a stop two miles from Russ’s office in Georgetown. He’d walk the rest of the way on foot. It would give him opportunity to scope out the area, make sure he wasn’t walking into an ambush. But even though the thought that he might be followed or watched sat like a heavy stone in the center of his back, the street was mostly quiet as he headed to the architectural firm, set in a Georgetown brownstone on a street that had settled in for the evening.

There was a light on in an office. Chuck assumed that had to be Russ. Hesitantly, he knocked on the front door, checking constantly over his shoulder to make sure that he really hadn’t been followed.

It was still paranoia even if they _were_ out to get you, he thought. It was simply justified paranoia in that case.

Russ opened the door, his eyebrows shooting up. “Chuck? What are you doing here?”

“I kind of need a place to hide.”

Russ ushered him inside. “Need help moving a body?”

“Not this time.” He looked ridiculous, he knew, as he hadn’t stopped to scrub off the dirt and he was wearing an obviously new T-shirt and jeans that had been grayed by over an hour of public transportation. And, Chuck realized, he was shivering. He didn’t know if it was fear or frustration. 

“Probably for the best. FBI will only overlook so much for spouses.”

Chuck managed a weak laugh.

“Is this a problem for Gwen?” Russ asked.

Chuck considered. “Yes,” he said. “But…it may not be safe to contact her.”

Instead of looking suspicious or upset that Gwen might be in danger—which would have been his first reaction, Chuck had to admit—Russ nodded. “Think somebody may have tapped our phones?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Come with me.”

Russ led the way through an spacious office that was as modern in its décor as his house was nostalgia-inspired. There were blueprints and drawings framed on the wall of what Chuck had to assume were the firm’s previous projects. At another time, he would have liked a moment or two to admire them, but right now, all he could wonder was if Graham had found him, if there were men on the way to arrest him again and force him to upload the Intersect.

Russ’s office was actually a bit of a mess, as papers covered the two large desks. There were two large-screen monitors showing different views of the same simulation of a dining room, and the remains of Russ’s dinner in a Styrofoam container. Seeing it reminded Chuck that he hadn’t eaten; he pushed the thought away and watched Russ reach into a drawer, take out a few folders, and remove the bottom of the drawer. Chuck’s eyes bugged out.

The drawer revealed a plugged-in phone. Russ picked it up and hit a button, holding a finger up for Chuck to not say anything. He turned his wrist to get a better look at his watch.

Chuck had one brief, paranoid burst of terror that Russ was calling Graham. Just as quickly, he dismissed it. He was tired, he was a little sore from his handcuff gymnastics, and he was scared. His brain was prone to creating trouble.

“It’s Chuck,” Russ said into the phone. “He’s being followed.” He paused and made an “mm-hmm” noise in response to whatever was said. He looked at Chuck. “Who’s following you?”

“Graham’s men. They want me to—”

Russ held up the finger again, keeping his eyes on his watch. “I think it’s serious,” he said into the phone. “He’s a mess. Mm-hmm. Yes. Got it.”

He hung up the phone and carefully replaced everything in the drawer, including the phone. A second hidden drawer revealed two more burn phones, separated from their batteries. He removed both of these. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “You’re going to go out the back and wait there for me. I am going to pull my car around and you will get in and keep your head down.”

“Where are we going?”

“Gwendolyn’s getting some agents she can trust together. C’mon.” Russ led the way out of the office.

“Just like that?”

“My wife’s job is…different. You’re not the first agent she’s had to protect, either from themselves or from Uncle Sam.”

“Oh. You have a secret door in your desk,” Chuck said, shaking his head.

“Cool, right? I designed it myself.” They reached the back door. “I’m going to get the car. Time me. If I don’t return within five minutes, head south. There’s a bus station. Get on the first bus you can. Use this number and call speed dial number seven. Keep your conversation short.”

Russ handed Chuck a burn phone.

“Wow. You really are an old hand at this,” Chuck said.

Russ gave him a sad sort of smile and headed outside. Chuck began to count the seconds. 

**11 JULY 2008  
DAVENPORT ESTATE  
20:01 EDT**

“Uh-oh,” Russ said, and Chuck nearly popped up in the backseat, though he’d been ordered several times not to. He couldn’t tell what was going on outside the car, as all he could see were trees and lampposts, not yet lit. From the way the car had been slowing down, he’d assumed they were close to wherever they were going. 

“What? What is it?” he asked. “Have we been discovered?”

“No. Agent Walker’s here. With a redhead.”

“Sarah?” This time, Chuck did pop up. He blinked to discover that they were in front of Gwen and Russ’s house, heading for the driveway. The bright red Camaro in the driveway had to belong to Carina, as Sarah’s Porsche was still in an hourly lot in D.C., for all Chuck knew. As he watched, Sarah, dressed for a night on the town, slid into the passenger seat.

“Get down,” Russ said.

“But it’s Sarah!”

“And I don’t know if she’s in on the plan. Stay down until it’s safe. Gwen will give us a signal.”

Reluctantly, Chuck crouched down again. Nate’s baseball cleats in the well by the backseat meant that it wasn’t the most pleasant experience. He saw Russ wave, and had to assume it was at Sarah, as Russ pulled into the driveway.

“Wait here,” Russ said, and went inside.

A moment later, Gwen appeared. “C’mon, it’s clear,” she said, opening the back door. “We checked: there’s no surveillance and nobody’s got the house bugged.”

Chuck looked around, but the driveway was empty save for the Davenports’ cars. “Where’d Sarah and Carina go?”

“They were here on an unrelated matter. Let’s get you inside.”

Though the team had stayed at the Davenport Estate for several weeks in December of the previous year, it hadn’t really felt like home. It was familiar, however, as Gwen took Chuck around the back so that they could come in through the sliding glass door that led into the kitchen. The estate looked so completely different during the summer, with the evening sunlight shining on lush grass rather than snow and the hydrangeas in full, outrageous bloom around the guest house.

Inside the kitchen, some sort of summit meeting was apparently taking place. Chuck had expected to find either Stephanie or Nate, Gwen’s kids. Instead, he found two FBI agents in plainclothes.

“Agent Nickerson, Agent Umani, this is Chuck,” Gwen said. Chuck’s confusion must have shown on his face, for she continued, “Laura and Desmond are two of the best at what they do.”

“Hostage rescue,” Laura Nickerson said before Chuck could ask. “Though it probably won’t come to that.”

Chuck swallowed hard. “Let’s hope not.”

Desmond Umani shrugged when Chuck looked at him. “I just know people,” he said.

“Don’t be modest, Des. He’s our go-to guy for chatter,” Gwen said, explaining to Chuck. “If something’s happening in the government, you know Des has heard about it. It’s mainly why they gave him such a high security clearance.”

Desmond looked apologetic over that. “Big ears,” he said to Chuck.

“It’s nice to meet you both,” Chuck said, and shook their hands. 

“There’s burgers in the bag if you’re hungry,” Gwen said. “And then we need to get to work. We’ve figured out that Graham’s gathering a group of agents for a special project tonight.”

“I was supposed to be in that group.” Chuck dove into the bag with gusto, taking two burgers. He hadn’t had time to refuel after his session at the gym.

“You had a meeting with him today?”

“Just a short one. I was at headquarters to visit a friend and he surprised me. I thought he was supposed to be in Asia, which was the only reason I figured I was safe to visit headquarters at all.” 

“What happened in the meeting?” Laura asked.

Chuck looked from one FBI agent to the other. Talking about the Intersect and Lincoln in front of Devon was one thing, but Dave’s paranoid words about Fulcrum sat heavily on his mind now. Who knew how far the corruption went? “I can’t…”

“Agents, would you excuse us? This sounds classified.”

“Certainly. We’ll be in the living room.”

“Tell Nate to turn the TV down if it’s too loud. Kids today,” Gwen said as the other FBI agents shuffled out of the kitchen. “They’ll go deaf if you let them. Chuck, are you okay?”

“I’m—I’m fine.” He was a little shaken, but he’d had a chance to finally, finally let the adrenaline settle on the ride between Russ’s office and the house. The fact that Russ had been so completely nonchalant about sequestering an agent in need away to his house, and so practiced at it, told him that Gwen and Russ likely did this a lot and that there wasn’t any reason to worry. Graham couldn’t reach him here. Or, if he could, it would be at great time and expense to himself. He took a big bite of a burger. “I imagine I don’t smell the greatest and this T-shirt is pretty gross by this point, but I’m physically okay.”

“What happened?”

“Graham sent men to get the jump on me. They pretended to be cops.”

Gwen pulled out a notepad and began writing. “Where was this?”

“Not too far from the gym.” When she asked, he told her the time it had happened and described both the men and the situation in detail. She walked him through the whole arrest, scribbling quickly in her shorthand.

“How’d you get away?”

“They took me to the tunnels under the Metro station. I overpowered one and tased another, and then I used public transportation to get away.”

Gwen frowned and wrote something down. “And you’re sure they’re Graham’s men? You heard them say his name?”

“Not directly. They just called him the boss. But this was his work. He threatened me. He said that I didn’t have a choice about uploading the Intersect. He said that the Intersect wouldn’t keep me from ‘snapping like a twig’ thanks to the Lincoln programming, and that I have to get the new version.”

“That’s preposterous.” Gwen scoffed, though she looked troubled. “Dr. Bartowski said there’s no chance of that happening.”

“Yeah, he also called her a liar. Real red letter day for Langston Graham, you know.” Chuck finished off the first burger and started on the second. He could practically feel his belly button and spine rubbing together from hunger. 

“You said you tased one of them?”

“I hit the other one first and knocked him out. I don’t know if he was okay or not after that. I didn’t stick around.”

“And there were five men total?”

“One’s got my cell phone and watch, one was patrolling the Metro station, and one was getting food. I saw him later, but he either didn’t see me or I ditched him. I didn’t know where to go, and I knew Russ wasn’t working late and they might not be watching him, so I went there.”

“That was a good move.” Gwen sat down at the table, finally, and began rubbing her temples. She was in her after-work getup—pressed khakis and a faded T-shirt that depicted a turkey shaped from a child’s hand. “Graham is back to being a pain in my ass, I see.”

“‘Back?’” Chuck asked. “This has happened before?”

“You’re not the first CIA case I’ve had, so I’ve gone a round or two with him. It’s like dealing with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He’ll be the nicest person in the world if he likes you, but if he doesn’t…”

“Well, he doesn’t like me, and I don’t think he ever has.” Graham had always been unwilling to put up with Chuck’s antics during conference calls. Even when the Prometheus members had accomplished a mission, there was usually more criticism than praise. Chuck had always assumed Graham viewed him as a gnat. He’d had no idea how deep the connections went.

“Well, you _are_ a walking PR nightmare,” Gwen said.

Chuck paused with the burger halfway to his mouth.

“In Lincoln, they had a rogueproject on their hands. I know the CIA’s motives, and I’m still surprised that they didn’t just kill the Lincoln subjects in their bunkers once the full extent of Carver’s programming was discovered and they realized they didn’t really have the phrases on hand to activate any of these agents that could be handy. After all, you were trained to be one-person armies, and the government likes minimum collateral. And with Carver still alive, there was a possibility he could be found and the phrases could be…extracted. So they kept you on ice.” Gwen got up and poured herself a glass of lemonade. She brought over a second one for Chuck while he stared at her, conflicted. He’d never heard her speak so bluntly about the project before. “You lot were useful and the best part was that you were already hidden and didn’t question why.”

“But why did nobody question the fact that there were people in bunkers?”

“Because it’s the CIA. The CIA overlooks a lot of things to get its mission done.”

Chuck took another bite, though he wasn’t nearly as hungry anymore. 

“And then, of course,” Gwen said, still scribbling on her notepad, “you’re discovered by your friend and suddenly, one of the Lincoln subjects is in the spotlight. Graham now can’t kill you without somebody calling attention to it. Even worse, you end up being the host for the Intersect. Now he _really_ can’t kill you.”

“No wonder he bullies me so much,” Chuck said.

Gwen took off her reading glasses. “You’ve maneuvered the Director of the CIA up against a wall. I can imagine he doesn’t appreciate that fact.”

“But does he really have to be such a bastard about it?”

“Yes. You don’t get to become the Director of the CIA by being nice.”

“Point.” Chuck finished the burger and looked toward the living room. “So they’re here for protection?”

“Laura’s really good at hiding people in a pinch, but I doubt it’ll come to that. Like the rest of us, Graham has to listen to the investors, and they won’t appreciate a project being held up because one candidate is missing. The Intersect upload will go through and your contract will be fulfilled.”

“Well, there’s that, then. Something is finally going right.” He balled up both of the burger wrappers and took a sip of lemonade. “Did Sarah know I was missing? That wasn’t what she was here about?”

“As far as I know, no.”

“I should give her a call.”

“You can call once Des is sure the new Intersect’s been uploaded. Just in case.”

Chuck dithered. “Are you sure?”

“They might be tracking communications to her phone.”

“What about Casey? He’ll be wondering why I haven’t come home, won’t he?”

“Your phone texted him about a sci-fi movie marathon downtown. So he has no reason to suspect anything.”

“Oh.” Chuck didn’t know how he felt about that.

“As soon as Des gets word, you can contact both of them. But right now, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

It didn’t sit well with him, not being able to let Casey and Sarah and Ellie know he was okay, but Chuck nodded. If they were watching his phone, then at least Gwen and the others could warn the team if the man with Chuck’s phone made a move against them. Their best advantage right now was being “off the grid,” so to speak. It was hard to think of it that way, though, when the last time he’d been off the grid, it had involved running through Eastern Europe, and now he was sitting in a kitchen with the late evening sunlight slanting in across the tiles and a glass of lemonade sweating on the table in front of him.

“We’re monitoring your phone,” Gwen said. “If they make any move that puts anybody in danger, we’ll contact them. And like I said, the minute Des hears that the upload was successful, you can call all of them.”

“Okay.”

“In the meantime, why don’t you go get cleaned up? Laura, Des, and I will keep an eye out.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

“Nonsense,” Gwen said, and shooed him out of the kitchen. “Let us do our jobs. You go relax.”

He took a shower. Since he’d left clothes at the Davenport estate during his last stay, he had fresh duds to change into, but the scab on his knee opened in the shower and had to be cleaned with hydrogen peroxide. When he wandered out, bandaged and clean, the FBI agents were gathered in the kitchen; Chuck was quickly shunted back to the living room. He found Nate sitting on one of the floor gaming chairs.

The fifteen-year-old looked up. “Chuck! Hey! Ready to get your ass kicked at _Gears of War_?”

“Hey,” Russ said mildly from the armchair.

“Sorry,” Nate said. “I meant butt.”

“Sounds good, but it’s not my as—butt that I’m worried about,” Chuck said, and settled in for an hour of PG trash talk with Nate as they maneuvered their characters through the game. Summer vacation was in full swing, which of course meant there wasn’t a curfew, as there had been the last time Chuck had been at the Davenport house. Eventually, Russ bade them good night. Occasionally, the FBI agents trooped through from their rounds of the property, but for the most part, Chuck and Nate were undisturbed.

Gwen, however, came in a few minutes after ten p.m. “Chuck?” she said, and Chuck’s fingers immediately stilled on the game controller. 

Nate, probably having recognized his mother’s tone of voice, didn’t even need to ask if Chuck needed a time-out. He paused the game.

Chuck rose warily to his feet, turning to face Gwen. “What?” he asked, and panic only increased when he caught the look on her face. “What is it?”

Gwen pulled him into the kitchen, though Chuck imagined Nate probably followed, staying out of sight, to listen. He only felt confusion and panic grow when she turned to face him, somber. “There’s been an explosion at the DNI,” she said.

Chuck felt as though he had gone back in time, to hearing about the first time the DNI had blown up. It had been Sarah that told him then, in the bunker, and she’d been a lot more businesslike about it. “What, again?” was what came out of his mouth.

“It was the Intersect. Nobody in the room with it survived.”

Chuck’s first thought was to wonder if Bryce had done it this time, too. He immediately realized what an absurd thought that was. Bryce wasn’t a murderer. “How…how many of them were there?”

“I don’t know. But Langston Graham was among them.”

“What?”

“And Chuck, it gets worse.”

People were dead. From the sound of it, it was a lot of people, too. “How? What could be worse than that?”

Gwen took a deep breath. “Ellie was in the observation room next door.”

Chuck felt his world fall away.


	64. Disconnect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A hospital is no place to be sick. — _Samuel Goldwyn_

**11 JULY 2008  
ST. LUCY’S EMERGENCY ROOM  
22:49 EDT**

Chuck hit the entrance to the ER and didn’t pause, though it nearly meant crashing into the automatic doors. Instead, he slid to the side, glancing one shoulder off of the metal frame of the door, and slipped through the narrowest opening he could manage. He repeated the process with the second set of doors, skidded to a stop inside, and swept a frantic look over the room. The minute he spotted the reception desk, he crossed to it in three strides.

The nurse on the phone didn’t even look up at him. “Sign in, please.”

“My sister, they told me she’s here, I need to see her right away.”

The nurse sighed. “Name?”

“Bartowski, Elli—ah, Eleanor Faye Bartowski. She would’ve come through less than an hour ago? Maybe a little more, I don’t know. It was probably less, I don’t know how much time has passed. I just know that I really, really need to see that she’s okay.”

The nurse suddenly looked less bored. “If you’ll wait just a second—”

“You don’t get it!” Did the woman not understand? That was his sister. She’d been close to an explosion and now she was in the hospital, and he needed to see her, to make sure that she really was okay, that Graham hadn’t gotten to her somehow. “I need to see her _now_!”

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask that you please calm down and—”

“Chuck!”

Chuck whirled on the spot to see Devon standing a few feet away, wearing a bloodstained shirt and jeans. His head immediately felt faint. Was that Ellie’s blood? What had happened? “Devon? What’s going on? Where’s Ellie? Is she okay? She made it, right? She’s okay?”

“Relax,” Devon said. “She’s going to be fine.”

Immediately, Chuck’s knees turned to water. His fists, which he hadn’t unclenched since the moment Gwen had told him that Ellie had nearly been blown up, finally unclenched. He felt the world sway dangerously, but managed to stay on his feet. Relief tasted tangible in his mouth until he realized what Devon had said. “Wait, going to be?”

Devon looked over at the nurse behind the desk. “I’ve got it from here, Kayla.”

“Thanks, Dr. Woodcomb.”

“Going to be?” Chuck asked again, as Devon took his arm and guided him away to a more secluded part of the waiting room. “Devon, what happened? What’s going on? Where is she?”

“She’s in surgery.”

Again, the world swayed, but Devon tightened his grip on Chuck’s arm. Since Chuck’s knees had liquefied again, it was probably the only thing keeping him upright. All he could think was, Surgery. My sister’s in surgery. Surgery was what they did to injured people. Surgery was that thing they do on _E.R._ where they cut into live humans like craft projects and shout about needing O-neg and things like that. Somebody was doing that to his sister. His sister was hurting.

“She got hit with some of the shrapnel from the explosion. She was in the back of the room, so it could have been much worse. There was some internal bleeding, but I just got good news: they’ve fixed that. Did you hear me, Chuck? She’s going to be fine.”

“Yeah.” Though the word surgery was still terrifying beyond all measure, Devon’s calm tone had broken through the ice of panic coating Chuck’s brain, making it hard to think. He took a deep breath. When that did nothing, he took another, and found that it helped this time. “Yeah. Yeah. You’re right. She’s going to be—how do you know they’re going to fix her right?”

“Because her doctor is one of the best. I made sure of it.”

Chuck looked in horror at the bloodstains on his clothes, and the pieces finally connected. “You were there?”

“I was in a waiting room. This isn’t Ellie’s blood. Some of the other doctors were in worse condition than she was, so we ran triage until the other professionals could get there.”

“We?”

“Me and Ellie. See? She was healthy enough to help with the first aid.”

“You said internal bleeding,” Chuck said, and nausea rose, coating the back of his throat and his mouth like a bilge. “There’s nothing fine about internal bleeding.”

Devon grimaced. “It was scary, but they got it stopped. They’re just stitching her up now. Where were you, by the way? I tried calling your cell like fifty times, but you never picked up.”

“Somebody took it from me,” Chuck said, swallowing the sick. When Devon looked startled at that, he sighed. “It’s been a really long, really confusing day. Gwen was the one who heard about the news and Ellie, and she gave me a ride here. When can I see Ellie? Soon?”

“She’ll be in post-op pretty quick, and then I’ll get you cleared to see her. Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure, what?”

“I need to get out of these clothes. I was holding down the fort until you got here, but I’ve got a set of scrubs in my locker. Mind staying here and keeping an ear out? Kayla over at the desk will set you up with any updates and can page me if something changes.”

Panic came back. “How likely is that?”

“Ellie’s healthy, Chuck. She’ll be just fine, so stay here and keep breathing. I’ll be right back.”

“Keep breathing. Right.”

He managed to stay on his feet until Devon hurried off, but the minute the other man was gone, all of the tension left his body at once. He collapsed into the nearest chair and leaned forward until his face rested in his hands. Ellie had been hurt. Ellie was going to be okay. There was internal bleeding, and surgery, but she was going to be okay. Ellie had nearly been blown up.

Graham _had_ been blown up.

Chuck would have been blown up, if he’d been there, too. Gwen had said there were no survivors.

Chuck began to shake. Hard.

“She’s fine,” he told himself, not caring that he was being relegated to the role of crazy person in the room by talking to himself. “She’s fine.”

When Devon came back, he’d managed to collect himself, though he was still shaking. Gwen had gone straight to the DNI upon dropping him off at the hospital, as part of the building blowing up had to be an “all hands on deck” situation. Chuck imagined that even Dave had been called in.

He looked over as Devon sat down next to him, wearing scrubs and looking exhausted. “You okay?” Chuck asked, as it occurred to him that witnessing the entire thing had to be twice as frightening as finding out after the fact.

“Yeah,” Devon said. “I wasn’t close enough to feel anything but the floors rattle. Just shaky, you know?”

“No kidding.” Chuck held his hand up so that they could both see it quiver in the bad fluorescent lighting.

Devon let out a long breath. “Scared about five years off my life.”

“Mine too. Gwen broke every speed limit to get here and it still felt like we were crawling.” Chuck scrubbed his hands over his face and when that did nothing to quash the too-exhausted-and-scared feeling, he ran his hands through his hair and left them interlocked at the back of his head. “We need to get out of the Intersect game.”

It was the first time he’d voiced the thought aloud since returning from the bunker. Sure, he’d discussed the idea that the Intersect—and Lincoln—could be removed with Sarah and Ellie, but hearing that in his own voice, so final, just felt different. His sister had nearly been blown up because of the Intersect. He’d nearly been blown up because of the Intersect. They were all stuck in this perpetual limbo once more because of the Intersect, because of Lincoln, because of things in his head.

“Damn right we do,” Devon said. “Any idea how?”

“Not sure.” Chuck stared at his feet. “But I’ll think of some way.”

“Good.”

Belatedly, Chuck looked around. “Have you called Sarah and Casey? Do they know?”

“I called Casey. He told me they’d handle it.” Devon looked exhausted, the day’s stubble somehow more obvious in the harsh lighting. It contrasted sharply with his skin, which was the same gray as Chuck’s own, Chuck figured. “He asked if I’d seen you. Where have you been?”

“Graham wanted me to upload the Intersect and didn’t want to take no for an answer,” Chuck said.

Devon gave him a horrified look. “What? Were you in—”

“No. They kept me somewhere off-site. I got away.” Chuck’s smile felt absolutely grim and humorless now. “Good thing, too.” 

“Dr. Woodcomb?” Kayla the Nurse called across the waiting room.

Instantly, both Chuck and Devon were on their feet. Devon gestured for Chuck to stay there as he headed toward the nurse. It only took a few seconds of conversation before he clapped Kayla happily on both shoulders and rushed back to Chuck. “She made it through just fine,” he said. “They can let us back to see her, but only one at a time.”

“You go,” Chuck said immediately.

“You sure?”

“You’re the fiancé. I’m just the annoying younger brother. I can chill here, see if Sarah and Casey show.”

“I’ll be quick,” Devon said.

“Take your time. Like I said, just the annoying younger brother.”

“Yeah, right,” Devon said, but he hurried through the double-doors and out of the waiting room. The minute he was out of sight, Chuck let out a long, slow breath. He fell back into the chair again and rested his head back until he could look at the brown-spotted ceiling tiles. Was that dried blood? No, it was probably just dust. St. Lucy’s had a great neurology department, but their E.R. waiting room left much to be desired.

God, he was tired. He was still freaked out and worried about Ellie, but somehow, seeing that relief on Devon’s face had been enough to kill most of the adrenaline. When he looked down, his right knee—his good knee, but the one also cut up by the day’s activities—was jiggling, but it didn’t change the fact that he was bone-weary from what had been the craziest day in recent history. He could use some caffeine. He’d get some coffee, hand it off to Devon when the other man came out. It would be a long night.

The vending machines were in a small room off to the side with something for everything—a spinning rack vending machine with plastic-wrapped sandwiches, candy, sodas, and most importantly, coffee. Chuck debated the energy drinks and figured he’d rather go low-tech. Plus, the hospital was cold. Coffee would warm him up. He put in two quarters and watched the cheap paper cup begin to fill.

He heard the pacing of high heeled shoes in the short hallway outside the vending machine room. They clicked back and forth and Chuck thought, I know how you feel. My sister was nearly blown to pieces today.

It made indigestion shoot through his midsection like a live spurt of acid.

Since he didn’t want to dwell on it, he grabbed the coffee cup. Maybe he’d offer it to High Heels. Whoever it was sounded like they could use it just as much as Chuck.

He stepped in the doorway and cleared his throat. “Hey, do you want a—Sarah?”

Sarah spun on her high heels so fast that she actively stumbled. Alarmed, Chuck took an instinctive half-step forward. Hot coffee sloshed over the rim of his cup and onto the skin between his thumb and his forefinger. He jumped—which only splashed coffee around worse.

Sarah, on the other hand, stared. Her eyes went huge and almost glassy, pupils shrinking to pinpricks. The blood drained out of her face; she stumbled back, groping blindly along the wall. “C-Chuck? Is that you?”

Chuck warily set the coffee down. “Who else would it be?”

“How—what are you—how? _How_?” Sarah stared at him so hard it was almost like she could see through him. “How are you here?”

“Gwen gave me a ride.”

“That’s not what I—” Sarah broke off mid-sentence and turned away to stare at the wall opposite her. She took a deep breath, one that made her entire torso shudder. “That’s not what I meant. How are you here? You’re alive!”

Chuck gaped at her, baffled. “Sarah, are you okay? Of course I’m alive. Why wouldn’t I be? What’s going on? Ellie’s fine. I haven’t been in to see her yet, but Devon says—”

“Beckman called me,” Sarah said, turning away from the wall. She was still bone-white. “She called me and told me you were dead, but you’re not dead because you’re right there and you weren’t blown up because you’re right there. You’re there, and you’re not dead.”

“Oh, my God,” Chuck said, as his brain finally caught up with him. “Sarah, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

When he stepped forward, though, she took a step back. “Why the hell didn’t you pick up your phone!” Belatedly, he realized that her clothes—the same outfit he’d spotted from Gwen’s driveway—were covered in flecks of hyper-glow paint, as though she’d been splashed by a craft project. “What the hell, Chuck? Seriously? I know you’re mad at me—”

“I’m not mad at—”

“But couldn’t you have _at least_ picked up your damned phone so that I didn’t have to spend the last ten minutes rehearsing how I was going to have to tell your sister that you had _died_?”

“Whoa, hold on,” Chuck said.

Sarah plowed on right past him. “What were you doing? Playing video games?”

“My phone got taken from me, for your information,” Chuck said. Confusion and guilt were quickly turning to annoyance. Maybe it was the way Sarah was glaring at him. Maybe it was the fact that he was tired and _sick_ of having to deal with everything. Hell, it was sheer exhaustion, and he knew it, but he could feel the anger rising. “It wasn’t like I had a choice.”

“What are you talking about? Your phone got taken away from you? By whom?”

“Graham’s men,” Chuck said promptly. “Or at least, that’s who I think they were. They never outright said while they were busy kidnapping me.”

Sarah gaped at him.

“So, you know what, sorry for being out of touch. I didn’t know you were calling or otherwise I would have found some way to tell you I wasn’t dead, don’t you think?”

“These days, I wouldn’t know,” Sarah said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that—yes, Devon?”

Chuck turned to see Devon standing at the mouth of the hallway, peering at them uncertainly. “Hey, Sarah,” he said, edging forward toward Chuck. “Sorry to, um, interrupt.”

“It’s fine,” both Chuck and Sarah said, turning away from each other.

“I just thought you’d want to know: Ellie’s awake.” He looked over at Chuck. “She wants to see you.”

“Okay.” Chuck shoved both hands in his pockets. “There’s coffee here if either one of you wants it. I’m going to—yeah, I’m just going to go.”

“I’ll walk you back,” Devon said.

Chuck didn’t look at Sarah as he walked away. He was tense, his spine ramrod straight, and every muscle in his body wound tight. Devon must have noticed, for the instant they were around the corner, he asked, “You okay, man?”

“I’m fine,” Chuck said. “Just a very, very long day.”

Devon nodded. They headed for the double-doors together and were nearly through when Chuck heard his name being called again. He turned slowly.

Sarah hurried across the waiting room and gave him a hug. It wasn’t a heat-seeking-missile hug, but it still caught him off-guard. He hugged her back. One—or both—of them was trembling, and it rocked through him. 

Eventually, Sarah let him go. “I’m glad you’re not dead,” she told him, and left.

“Don’t look at me,” Devon said when Chuck gave him a confused look. “I don’t understand women any better than you do. What was all that about, anyway?”

“I don’t know.” Chuck ran his hand over his face again and took a deep breath. His stomach was still in knots over Ellie. He hadn’t even seen her yet and his thoughts were a mess. Something was wrong with Sarah and she was going to start repressing it or not talking about it or whatever she did because it was Sarah. His sister was recovering from life-saving surgery. He’d been nearly blown to pieces. He hadn’t even talked to Casey yet and there were bound to be issues there, too. It wasn’t even midnight and he was just _so_ tired, but it looked like a long night ahead.

He took a deep breath again. “Let’s go see Ellie.”

“Okay. This way. They moved her to a different section for post-op. I’ll come back and get Sarah.” Devon led the way down a corridor that smelled of disinfectant and other hospital things Chuck couldn’t identify. They had to go two floors up and down another hallway to get to Ellie’s room. At the door, Devon paused. “This is where I leave you. Waiting room’s through there.”

“Thanks, Devon.”

“She probably looks worse than she feels. Keep that in mind. They’ve got her on the good drugs.”

“Okay.”

He had to bolster himself for the worst. Even then, it didn’t come close. Devon’s warning hadn’t given him leave to imagine how pale Ellie was, her skin leached of all color so that she looked gray and bruised and tiny in the harsh light. She lay on her back with her eyes closed and there were machines all over the place, monitoring her blood pressure, heart-rate, things Chuck didn’t understand. A needle—he hated needles—poked out of her arm to an IV drip. She had her eyes closed, but she was grimacing.

It made him feel so impossibly scared and sad to see his sister like this.

After a second, he found the courage to move out of the doorway. The nurse puttering with a clipboard by the machines looked up and gave him an encouraging smile. “You can come closer,” he said. “She’s resting, but she can hear you if you talk to her.”

“Thanks,” Chuck told him. Warily, he moved around to the other side of the bed. “I’m not in the way if I…”

“No, no, you’re fine.”

Ellie stirred, the grimace deepening as whatever she did pained her. It hurt Chuck like a physical ache. Instinctively, he moved to try and stop her, though he had no idea how.

“Chuck?” Her voice was faint. “That you?”

“Hey, El,” Chuck said, and bit his bottom lip. “I’m here. Don’t try to move or anything, okay? I’m right here.”

“Trust me,” Ellie said, opening her eyes to look at him. They weren’t quite clear of the pain and the drugs, but she seemed a great deal more lucid than he had expected. “I tried that already.”

“Bad idea?” He forced a smile.

“Really bad idea.”

This time, the smile came a little more naturally.

“Quit hovering,” Ellie said. “If you’re going to hover, pull up a chair or something.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He had to maneuver around a tray table to pull the chair closer to the hospital bed. It made for an awkward spot to sit, as he had the heart-rate monitor almost poking into his shoulder, but he obeyed Ellie, sitting down. The minute he did, he reached for her hand. “How do you feel?”

“Floaty.” Ellie closed her eyes for a minute. “I may fall asleep on you.”

“That’s perfectly fine. You, uh, you do what you need to do.” Chuck looked over at the nurse, who was still bent over the clipboard, scribbling. “That’s, ah, that’s a lot of writing you’re doing. Is that normal?”

“Chuck,” Ellie said, her voice slurring a little. “Let Mike do his work.”

“His name is Mike?” Chuck asked.

The nurse shook his head. “Scott,” he mouthed at Chuck, and shrugged. “I’m just about done here. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes to check on you, Dr. Bartowski. If you need anything, you just press that button there.” He pointed out a call-button to Chuck.

“Thanks, Scott,” Chuck said, and the nurse left. He turned back to Ellie. “Still floating?”

“Don’t feel so good. Might throw up.”

“Wow,” Chuck said. “Well, uh, okay, uh. Let me…” He searched around until he found a yellow-orange plastic bowl of some sort, probably meant for just this purpose. “Well, we’ve got it covered if you do. Do you want me to try putting your hair back?”

“S’fine. Feels gross.” Ellie started to lift her hand, possibly to mess with her hair, and flinched, letting out a moan that made Chuck want to throw up in sympathy. “Never mind. It’s fine the way it is. Gross and all.”

“It looks great,” Chuck lied, as it was a tangled mess. “You look great.”

“Do not.” Ellie went silent, her face going slack for a second. She seemed to wake up a few seconds later. “But thanks for saying so.”

“I can go to your apartment and get your shampoo and some things for you in a little while,” Chuck said. “And some stuff for Devon so he can stay here.”

“S’okay, it’s fine.” The words were coming slower. “I can handle it.”

“You should get some sleep. Let others pamper you for a bit. Rest, you know.”

“That sounds good.” Ellie’s face went slack again. Chuck, who’d barely dared to move for fear that he might jostle her, let out a single breath. He felt his shoulders relax, followed by his chest and the rest of his torso, until he was sitting there, almost slumped forward. Ellie’s hand was impossibly warm in his, almost burning. Was that a fever? Or was he just so cold—he had been so cold with outright terror since Gwen had told him about the Intersect and Ellie—that everything else felt like a furnace in contrast?

He didn’t know how long he stayed, watching his sister breathe. She didn’t look happy: her brow was furrowed, and he didn’t know if it was pain or something else, if the drugs were working. Scott came back in and made a few more notes on the clipboard, but he didn’t talk. Chuck was grateful. Sometimes he himself talked to fill the space quiet created, but right now, he needed the silence.

They’d tried to upgrade the Intersect. It had literally blown up in their faces.

“Why were you even there?” he said aloud, looking at Ellie’s sleeping form after Scott had left. “Why did they even need you to be there when they uploaded the Intersect? Did Graham make you, too?”

“Wanted to be there,” Ellie murmured.

Chuck jumped. “You’re awake?”

“’Course I am, silly. Wanted to be there. Wanted to see how to take the Intersect out of you.”

Chuck frowned. “Don’t you mean put it into me?”

“I meant what I said, Chuck. I always do. I’m going to sleep now.”

“Okay. Why don’t I go get Devon?”

“Sounds good.”

He was loath to let go of her hand, but he forced himself to set it gently atop the sheets. “I love you, Ellie,” he said. “Not, you know, just in case or anything. Just, I needed to say that. When I come back, I’m bringing enough flowers to make the head gardener at the Botanical Gardens jealous.”

“Can’t wait. Love you, too.”

Outside her room, he paused to collect himself, resting his back against the warmth of the hospital wall until he was sure one of the passing nurses would hurry him along for loitering. His knees wanted to buckle again, but he locked them. Ellie had been lucid, but it didn’t change the fact that underneath her hospital gown, there were bandages that had no business being there, or that she was hurting underneath the haze of the drugs, and it hurt him in turn. The imagined, he knew, was always worse than the reality, but the reality had been pretty damned bad.

He kind of understood Ellie when she said she might throw up. He felt a bit like being sick all over the linoleum.

After another minute, he stood and went to find Devon to hand off the bedside baton, so to speak. He didn’t know if Sarah had left the hospital to go handle Intersect matters. The NSA and the CIA were likely in chaos right now, the CIA more so because their Director had just been burnt to a crisp.

He found her sitting in the waiting room Devon had mentioned. He drew up short.

She looked up from her hands at him. “Hi.”

Warily, he took a seat next to her. “Where’s Devon?”

“He went to go see if the gift shop had any calla lilies. If they don’t, I imagine he’s buying everything else in the shop anyway.”

“Oh. I hope he leaves some for me.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Figures.”

Sarah turned to look at him. “Chuck, where is your cell phone?”

“I don’t know. Some guy has it.”

“What? Why does some guy have it? Chuck, tell me what the hell is going on.”

He nearly snapped that he’d already given his statement to Gwen, but thankfully common sense reasserted itself at the last second. Sarah had been out with Carina. She was working on piecemeal information just like the rest of them. The Intersect had blown up. Things were crazy, and that wasn’t even getting into the fact that she’d genuinely thought he was dead earlier.

“I met with Graham this afternoon,” he said.

“What!” Sarah shot upright in her seat. “Why? Why would you do that?”

“He suckered me into it. Ambushed me in the cafeteria while I was meeting with Dave. There wasn’t any way I could say no to the Director of the CIA in front of all of those people, so I kept the meeting short.” And he’d had his tattoos ready to move into his line of vision the whole time. Even now, he still felt spurts of the same terror and anger that had plagued him during the meeting, though they had paled and withered in contrast to his all-consuming earlier fear about Ellie. “Long story short: he wanted me to upload the new Intersect. Seems the CIA is just as eager to keep me as the NSA is to ditch me.”

Sarah rubbed her temples.

“And stupid me thought that was the end of it.”

“Why? Why would you ever think that?”

“I don’t know. I thought I had a pretty good presence going in my exit, but I guess not. He sent five guys after me.”

“Are you okay?”

“Not really overall. Physically, I’m fine.” Chuck stretched his legs out and tipped his head back to rest against the back of the seat. He stared at the ceiling. “They roughed me up a little, but I got out of there.”

“How?”

“I flashed.”

“There’s more to the story, isn’t there?”

“Yes, there’s a lot more to it, but can I just…not tell it right now? Nothing personal, but it’s been a long day.”

There was a long pause before Sarah cleared her throat. “Sure. You’re right. It’s been a long day. We can talk about this later.”

Chuck tilted his head to look at her, though he didn’t sit up from his resting point. “Thank you,” he said, putting his hand on top of hers.

She nodded tightly, and didn’t withdraw her hand. “It’s no problem. I should probably call Casey and make sure he’s up to speed. Or maybe I don’t need to do that. Hey, Casey.”

Casey stormed into the waiting room like an assault team. His scowl was so intense that Chuck immediately dropped Sarah’s hand and sat up straight. The NSA agent didn’t comment. Instead, he slapped a paper bag against Chuck’s chest so hard that Chuck coughed. “Got your damned cell phone back.”

“Th-thanks.” The bag did indeed contain Chuck’s cell phone and his watch. “Wait, how’d you know?”

“Like you’d really stay at a four-movie marathon without taking a break to go get pizza, at the very least.” Casey rolled his eyes. “What do you think, I’m some kind of amateur?”

“A little over-analytical of my eating habits, maybe, but in this case, I’m grateful.” Chuck slipped the watch on. Something occurred to him. “How’s the guy you took it from?”

“He’ll live. Walker, Beckman’s telling me we’ve got to get Bartowski out of the country. Fulcrum thinks he’s dead, he’s gotta stay that way for a little while.”

“Wait, what? Fulcrum?” Chuck straightened, and then the rest of Casey’s words sank in. “Leave the country? No way. I’m not leaving Ellie, not when she’s injured like this—”

“You don’t have a choice, moron. Orders from above. The sooner we’re on a plane, the better.”

“I need to talk to Beckman,” Sarah said.

“It can wait. Let’s move.”


	65. Proceed with Caution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. — _Martin Buber_

**12 JULY 2008  
FLIGHT 6442  
10:18 GMT**

He hadn’t expected to sleep, as he had never slept much on planes—Sarah’s tiny Cessna aside—but the minute Chuck reclined the seat on the private jet, he was out like a light. It wasn’t so deep of a sleep that he didn’t wake when Sarah or Casey moved around, but for the most part, he dozed his way across the Atlantic. At least, he assumed it was the Atlantic. They were heading east when he fell asleep.

The compass still said east when he woke.

“Morning,” Casey said when Chuck, bewildered and befuddled, sat up. “Have a nice nap, sunshine?”

Chuck grumbled at him. “Any news?” he asked. His voice sounded rusty, so he cleared his throat.

“Haven’t checked. You can call when we land.”

“When’s that?”

“’Bout an hour.”

“Okay.” Chuck rubbed sleep from his eyes and looked around. In the row behind them, Sarah still had her chair reclined; she was curled on her side, facing away from him. He paused in the aisle, studying the line from her ear to her shoulder, marred only by the fall of her hair, as the clubbing outfit really didn’t cover much. He peeled off the jacket he’d been wearing the night before and wrapped it awkwardly around her torso on his way to the bathroom.

When he returned, a little more awake, she was using it for a pillow. He shrugged to himself and sat down. “I feel like hell,” he told Casey.

“Look like hell, too.”

“Thanks.” Chuck rubbed at his wrist and winced as he thumbed one of the bruises left there from the handcuffs the day before. His watch told him it was five in the morning on the east coast, which only made him wince again. No wonder he wanted more sleep. “Where’re we going?”

“Wherever the plane goes,” Casey said.

“You’re helpful.”

Casey shrugged.

“Get any sleep at all?”

“What the hell is up with the chatty cathy-ism, Bartowski?”

“Going to take that as a no.” Chuck pushed himself out of his seat again and went to the wet bar up at the front of the cabin, his stomach rumbling.

“Bit early for a drink. Or late. Whichever.” Casey’s tone held every bit of judgment that either outcome merited.

“Don’t want a drink. Hungry.” He rummaged through the cabinet, whistling under his breath at the caliber of the alcohol present. There wasn’t food to go with it, which he thought was a bit of a rip-off. In the end, he grabbed a jar of maraschino cherries and the cup of toothpicks and headed back to his seat. He gave Casey’s incredulous stare a look. “What? They’re fruit.”

“Give ’em here, I’m hungry, too.”

In quiet solidarity, the men speared and ate drink garnishes while the plane flew on and Sarah slept. Chuck tried not to think about that, or his sister. It was simpler to eat the cherries and not think for a little while. Or so he figured. His brain evidently didn’t agree, as thoughts filtered right through his barriers.

He worried about Ellie. They’d loaded him onto a plane and whisked him away with only one chance to say good-bye to Ellie while Casey and Sarah collected their emergency gear. Ellie had slept through his good-bye, which meant she’d have to find out in the morning that he was gone. Devon would have to tell her that news while she was cranky from the morphine—Bartowskis never reacted well to drugs for long, which made them very bad patients—and hurting and dealing with the ramifications of nearly being killed. 

He bit hard into a cherry. She shouldn’t have even been there at all. She’d been at the Intersect upload for him, Chuck knew, which made him feel sick to his stomach. What if Fulcrum had planted a stronger bomb? What if she hadn’t been at the back of the room? What if instead of flying away from a sister in a hospital bed, they were pulling him away from a funeral?

They weren’t. But since he was flying away from her as fast as he could, and he had no idea what was going to happen next, that didn’t seem to be much comfort. Chuck stared out the window and tried not to imagine the worst.

**12 JULY 2008  
PISA, ITALY  
13:42 ITA**

By the time the plane landed and they shuffled out onto the tarmac, Chuck’s body felt like it had endured one long punishing session with Casey’s ex-second-in-command, old Lieutenant Smith. The description was more apt than he knew, he discovered: the signs leading into the airport were in Italian, where the selfsame Smith had originally laid his beat-down on Chuck and had been tranqued to within an inch of his life by Sarah.

“Italy?” he asked, blinking against bright sunlight. He shouldered his backpack. “We’re in Italy?”

“Pisa,” Casey said. He shoved Chuck toward the airport.

“Wait, with the tower? Can we go see the tower?”

“No. Move.”

“Why even come to Pisa, then?”

“Because that’s where we landed.”

Chuck sighed and let himself be pushed forward. Sarah followed. She hadn’t said a word since she’d woken up on the plane. She’d merely handed Chuck his jacket back and had disappeared into the bathroom. To be honest, she didn’t look like she’d slept at all, and the silence was beginning to unnerve Chuck. 

They were met at the door by an agent in a G-man suit, who simply handed Casey a duffel bag and left without saying a word.

“Make sure it’s not a bomb,” Chuck said.

Casey rolled his eyes. “Don’t say ‘bomb’ in an airport, moron.”

“Why not? You just did.”

“Is the entire trip going to be like this?” Casey asked. Before Chuck could open his mouth to deliver the natural smart-ass reply, Casey reached into the duffel bag and shoved something at him. “Take a minute. And then come back in a better mood.”

It was a cell phone, not as technologically advanced as the one he’d had to ditch in D.C., but it made international calls. Chuck wasted no time; he stepped away from Casey and Sarah and dialed Devon from memory.

The prognosis made him weak-kneed with relief yet again as he returned. “She’s doing better,” he said. Sarah was nowhere to be found. “She was asleep, so I didn’t talk to her, but she’s doing okay. There weren’t any complications after we left. The doctor’s coming in to check on her soon, so I’ll call back again, but for right now, things look good.”

“Good. Here.” Casey handed him a packet. “Go get changed.”

“New clothes yet again,” Chuck said, saluting him with the packet. “I wonder what persona NCS has picked out for me this time.”

“I always hold out hope that it’s a mime,” Casey said. “So far, no luck.”

Chuck laughed. The clothes were nondescript to the extreme, just a blue shirt and dark pants with cargo pockets and regular brown shoes. He debated these for a minute and chose to stick with his chucks. If he needed to get away, he’d rather be wearing familiar footwear. There was a pouch full of euros and his passport stuck in one of the cargo pockets. He hung the pouch around his neck, under his shirt, and tried not to frown too hard at the passport. Apparently he’d gone back to being Pete Rogers.

Sarah was waiting for him outside of the bathroom. “I had nothing to do with it,” she said. “They must’ve used my old contact and he probably thought it was a joke.”

“Feels like old times.”

Sarah gave him an odd look, but didn’t comment. He wondered if he should ask. She’d been so quiet, intensely so, ever since they’d left the hospital. Was she reliving those moments when she had thought him dead? She never said one way or the other. She had simply stayed quiet, her eyes lingering on him once or twice until he’d ignored it by falling asleep. It was probably a coward’s move. Maybe he should have pushed.

He’d push later. Right now, they were in the international airport at Pisa, which for some reason had a huge statue of a pigeon on the lawn surrounding it. It hardly seemed like the time or place.

Casey waited for them by the pigeon, swinging a set of car keys around one finger. “IDs?” he asked.

“Pete and Diana Rogers,” Sarah said for both of them. “You?”

Casey looked like he had swallowed something foul. “Barnabas Lynch.”

“Again?”

“What do we call you?” Chuck asked, squinting at him. “Barnabas? Barney? Are you a Barney? You don’t really look like a Barney.”

“In a second, I’m going to look like the guy with his foot up your ass.”

“Lynch it is,” Chuck said. “So…what’s the plan?”

Casey held up the duffel. “First stop is to drop off something for Beckman.”

“She put us on courier duty?” Sarah asked, frowning.

“Had to justify the use of the jet. We need to drop this off in Florence.”

“Florence?”

“What of it?”

“Why didn’t we just fly in there, then?”

“Because our contact is in Pisa.” Casey’s tone said what his words didn’t: get with the picture, Bartowski. “It’s a simple stop-and-drop mission. Even we can’t screw this one up.”

**12 JULY 2008  
RENTAL CAR  
17:08 ITA**

“Really, Casey?” Chuck asked, shifting the icepack so that it fit better against the front of his face. “‘Even we can’t screw this up?’ Why not just say, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’ or even, ‘Here, kitty, kitty, kitty?’ Typical.” He slouched back against the backseat of the Fiat.

“What’re you so cranky about, Bartowski?” Casey asked. “We dropped the package off.”

“I don’t know, Casey. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I can’t feel my face—because you _jinxed_ us!”

“I didn’t jinx it,” Casey said.

Sarah, in the front seat and nursing her elbow, said, “Actually, Casey, you kind of did.”

“We finished the mission, didn’t we?”

“Chuck got hit in the face.”

“Twice,” Chuck said around the ice pack.

“And now you’ve got a long vacation to rest up and relax and get over it. See? It all works out.”

“It would’ve worked out better if I hadn’t gotten hit in the face,” Chuck said.

“Sounds like a personal problem, Bartowski.”

Chuck glared at him. He peeked at Sarah, expecting to see some sort of sympathetic look in the visor mirror like she usually had whenever Casey gave him a hard time. She, however, was looking down and away from him. In addition to her uncharacteristic silence, this seemed like a huge sign that something was indeed up. He turned the subject over in his mind.

He also wondered what she had gone to talk to Gwen about. Should he ask? He glanced at Casey, who was gripping the steering wheel and glaring at the other Italians on the road as though he were in a Grand Prix race with all of them, and decided against it. Sarah hadn’t mentioned going to see Gwen to either of them. She might not want Casey to know.

“Where are we going now?” he asked instead. Outside, Italy rushed by, looking both oddly like California and yet lushly green at the same time. The road signs were in Italian, which he couldn’t read, though at least it wasn’t Greek. If they were going to be spending any length of time here, he needed to pick up an Italian-English dictionary. 

“Vacation. We could use a break.”

“Vacation where?”

“Where there are tourists. Where else? Now, be quiet, driving in this country is worse than trying to fight a land war in Asia.”

“Well, they say never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line,” Chuck said, and was glared into silence by Casey. After a moment, he shrugged to himself. As he did so, he caught Sarah looking at him with the visor mirror. She shifted her gaze away, but not in time, and he was reminded of their not-argument the night before. They’d made a pact to be friends, and friends talked about things that were on their minds. 

Once they arrived wherever they were going, he decided, they really needed to talk.

**12 JULY 2008  
RIOMAGGIORE, ITALY  
17:42 ITA**

It turned out that the town the government had leased them temporary apartments in couldn’t even be approached by car. The only ways to get there, Chuck discovered, were by boat and train, as Riomaggiore was a tiny little town of brightly-colored buildings stacked one on top of the other, jutting out onto the rocks of the coast in the Italian Riviera. He could understand why tourists flocked there: it was colorful, cooled by the sea, and every direction led to a brand new and fascinating postcard vista.

But he felt a little antsy when they left the car in Corniglia, hiked down through the town, and took the regional train to Riomaggiore. Neither Sarah nor Casey seemed particularly perturbed, though, so he didn’t mention it. Apparently, the train connected five little towns and then headed south to La Spezia, a slightly-less-tiny town to the south. It was remote, but according to Casey, should be swarming with tourists.

“Are you sure this place is where the tourists go?” he asked, craning his neck to look around. Riomaggiore had one principle street, which climbed at a steep incline. It was lined with shops, a lot of them closed, and restaurants on the first floors of the buildings. The second, third, and fourth floors looked like apartments of some type, all bright colors that matched the paint that had covered Sarah’s clothes earlier. “It looks pretty empty.”

“It’s a day-trip location,” Casey said, re-shouldering his backpack. “The only ones here at night are the real out-of-towners and the locals. Which means we can watch out for any repeat offenders.”

“Oh. Great.” They continued walking up the cobble-stone-paved road. 

“Chin up, Bartowski,” Casey said. “There’s some great hiking to be found. Lots of little places on these paths for you to get in trouble.”

“Provided you don’t jinx it,” Chuck said.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Does anything ever change with you two?”

“Sorry,” both Chuck and Casey said.

Sarah checked her phone and nodded to their left. “This is it. Up the steps, on the second level. They left the keys under the mat.”

“Is that safe?” Chuck wondered as Casey led the way up a narrow set of steps. The buildings were built into the face of the mountain, which meant that there were pathways on each of the tiers; overhead, laundry lines were strung, displaying the wash.

“You just said there’s nobody here, Bartowski.”

“Even so, it’s still a tourist-heavy area and—”

“Oh, my God,” Sarah said. “Shut up! Both of you!”

Chuck started, and unfortunately chose the worst moment for it, as his toe caught on the edge of the stair. He nearly tumbled. Only a last-minute grab of the banister spared him from a fall. When he righted himself, however, both of the other spies were staring at him. Casey snorted. Sarah let out a long sigh through her nose and turned away. She headed into the first door closet to the stairs, without another word.

“Wonder what’s eating her,” Casey said, and headed for the next door. Chuck followed him, glancing back over his shoulder at the door she had gone through. He nearly crashed into Casey, who’d stopped and was now giving him a funny look. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Uh, aren’t we roommates?”

“Nope. Your cover is Mr. Rogers. Married to Mrs. Rogers.” Casey pointed gleefully at Sarah’s door. “Toodles.”

He shut his own apartment door in Chuck’s stunned face.

Chuck swallowed as he turned and headed to the first door. He thought back to that small condo in Athens, the one he and Sarah had had to abandon in a hurry because of Bryce. They’d been staying on the Aegean Sea then and now it was the Mediterranean, but everything else fit. They were once again uncertain of their place and of the enemy. The Intersect had just blown up. Sarah was tense, as she had been then, tired and almost cranky. Full circle, he thought again, and paused at the door. Should he knock? Technically, it was his apartment, too, but…

Sarah pulled the door open. “Come in.”

“Sorry—I wasn’t sure—I could go down and find a hostel or something.”

“It’s fine. There are two rooms.” Sarah waited until he’d stepped inside and shut the door behind him. The apartment was a little spare, Chuck saw: there was a small kitchen immediately off to his right and a common area directly ahead. To the left, doorways led to what he assumed were the bedrooms, and a bathroom. 

“High class,” he said, attempting to smile.

“Beats living in a barn,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Chuck said. “And I wasn’t in any way, shape, or form knocking the night we _did_ spend in a barn.” He barely remembered it, after all. Their entire journey from the bunker to the air base in Italy was more or less blurry in his memory, possibly thanks to the fact that his brain had been in a state of constant confusion and fear. “Sarah, are you okay? You’re…”

“I’m what?” Sarah asked, her tone sharp.

“Never mind. Which room do you want?”

“Whichever.”

“Helpful,” Chuck said, and immediately wanted to take it back. Indeed, Sarah glared. Since there didn’t seem to be anything he could say without getting his head bitten off, he chose to shrug and headed for the room farther back into the apartment. Like the rest of the apartment, it was bare of everything but the essential furniture: two single beds—he’d picked the kids’ room—and a small chest of drawers. There was a crucifix on the wall; he gave that a wide berth as he looked around, peering out the room’s small window to the town around it. There was even a bell tower outside his window, though the bell looked rusted and disused. Evening sunlight lit everything in faint gold, casting an ethereal glow over the world.

Even though he was tired and his face hurt, he set his backpack on the bed and headed back into the common room. “It’s gorgeous out,” he said, jerking his thumb at the window. “Want to go for a walk?”

“No,” Sarah said.

Chuck drew up short. She was sitting on the couch, hunched forward and pinching the bridge of her nose between her forefinger and her thumb.

“Can I get you anything? Tylenol? You’re starting to freak me out a little.”

“I’m fine. Go take your walk.”

“Are you s—”

“Chuck! Just—please, leave me alone. Okay?”

It was hard not to feel like a kicked puppy. He reminded himself that she was tired, that they were all stressed and jet-lagged, and it had been the twenty-four hours from hell. She didn’t mean it. He still felt it like a punch to the gut, though.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, his voice a little cooler than he expected. “Whatever you want.” He headed for the door. “I’ve got my cell phone and my watch.”

“Like that’s going to do any good,” Sarah said, without opening her eyes.

Chuck stopped in his tracks. “Yeah,” he said, his mouth getting away from his brain, “like I _asked_ to get abducted. Right.”

He heard a sigh. “That was a low blow. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. You should go on your walk. I’m not good company right now.”

It was probably smarter just to go outside and leave her to herself. Unfortunately, he’d heard misery in her voice, and he had a lifetime of not being able to walk away from that behind him. So he turned around, slowly. “Sarah, without biting my head off—”

“Biting your head off?” Sarah asked, opening her eyes to give him an exasperated look. “Really?”

“That’s precisely what I’m talking about.” Chuck took a deep breath and decided to try a new tack. “Is this jetlag?”

“Biting your head off?” Sarah repeated.

He heard Robbie the Robot warning him of danger—a second too late, as it always went. “I’m making sure this is just travel fatigue and not something I did.”

“Because my moods revolve around you?” Sarah’s look turned incredulous. She rose to her feet, and Robbie beeped a little louder in Chuck’s head. “Is that it? What does it even matter to you?”

“It matters because if I’ve done something wrong, I want to fix it. Are you mad at me, Sarah?”

“I can be in a bad mood without it being about you, Chuck.”

“Okay,” Chuck said, holding his hands up for peace.

The move proved futile, as it only made Sarah’s scowl deepen. “Don’t act like that,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m going to jump down your throat and kill you. It’s insulting.”

Chuck wisely refrained from pointing out that she was doing a good impression of the very thing she claimed she wouldn’t do, as he valued his limbs. Instead, he fixed what he hoped was a calm look on his face, burying the annoyance as best he could. “Sorry.”

“And you can’t fix _everything_ , you know. That’s not the way the world works.”

“I can try. Sarah, seriously, what’s bothering you? You can talk to me about anything, you know that. I’m your friend.”

He meant the statement to be reassuring—they’d agreed to be friends, after all—but it had the opposite effect. Sarah’s scowl blossomed into a full glare. She sat back on the couch and didn’t look at him. “You should go,” she said, and Chuck knew in that moment, he’d been completely dismissed like a peasant from the court.

Now completely confused, he had no choice but to head for the door. “If you change your mind, give me a call,” he said.

There was no reply as he left.

**12 JULY 2008  
RIOMAGGIORE, ITALY  
20:01 ITA**

There wasn’t too much to Riomaggiore, Chuck discovered. Sure, it was interesting wandering through the buildings, discovering little churches and gardens and other domestic scenes. The town was cut into the mountain in a V-shape, with green vineyards rising up on either side in terraces and mingling with groves of lemon trees. To the west, there was the sea, which was an impossible cerulean blue that the Pacific Ocean had never quite achieved. But other than the scenery and a few shops, there didn’t seem to be much there.

With the sun beginning to set soon, Chuck decided to stop roaming along the coast at the bottom of the village and head upwards for a better vantage point. He felt oddly restless and alone, and wondered if he should go back and try to convince Sarah to come out and have dinner. No, it was better not to. She had looked exhausted, she’d probably be asleep by this point anyway. And she didn’t seem to want his company at the moment, either way.

She was also a fully grown woman. If she was hungry, she could find her own damned dinner.

He shook his head as that thought flitted through his mind. Apparently her bad mood had infected him worse than he’d thought. It was understandable, given that the day before, he’d had to literally escape from the bad guys, his sister had been blown up, and he’d officially been listed as a casualty. One international flight and a botched mission later, it was no wonder he was in a bad mood. Adding Sarah’s own bad mood, which leaked into his, into the mix didn’t help.

Maybe he was finally learning to roll with the punches. It had been an incredibly rough…year? Not even, Chuck thought. Ten months since Bryce had sent him the Intersect. Not only had he gotten free of the bunker, he’d gone back and returned to the land of the living a second time. He found a set of stairs that led to the next level up and began to climb. He’d faced down the Director of the CIA, a man who literally held control of Chuck’s life with a single phrase. With Gwen’s help, he’d carved out a deal with the government to recoup some damages. He’d made plans to continue having a life after his term working for the NSA and CIA, hadn’t he? Sure, the plans of moving to the mountains and being on his own again had secretly been giving him an ulcer, but he’d made them. Empirical data pointed to the fact that Chuck Bartowski had indeed learned to adapt.

So, why the hell did it feel so hollow?

Logically, he knew why. Physically, he was tired from all of the aforementioned awful crap that had happened to the Prometheus team in the past twenty four hours. Emotionally, he was a wreck, thanks to, as Ellie would say, a series of subliminal training programs that had hijacked the neural pathways to his amygdala to ensure that his emotions could be turned off like a switch. He’d gone from Chuck Bartowski, affirmed pacifist, to having killed at least three men. And now he was in an Italian paradise, presumed dead, with little butt the clothes on his back anyway, and those had been a gift from Uncle Sam. He had no idea what the future held again. This time, the wounds seemed to cut so much more deeply, probably because once again, he’d allowed himself to hope and get excited about Dave’s business idea.

Ellie was in the hospital, hurting, while he wandered through the Italian countryside. A terrorist group had blown up the Intersect. And all Chuck had was a cranky NSA agent for a partner, an even crankier CIA agent for a roommate, and a few newspaper clippings leading him to a man he wasn’t sure he could trust.

The path opened out into a courtyard of some type, with an old stone church to his right. Chuck stopped to take a picture, mostly because the church had statues of what he had to assume were the apostles on pedestals halfway up the building. The giant arched doors were closed; otherwise, he might have wandered in, as he’d read somewhere that churches were always open in Europe. Maybe during the day sometime, as it looked like the team would be there for awhile.

With a shrug at that thought, he turned and continued west. Across the courtyard, he could see the building—painted white—labeled with a sign that said _Il Castello_. He really needed to get that dictionary, he thought. If Sarah were there, she would have known what it meant. The woman knew most every language on the planet.

He turned the corner around the Castello and abruptly wished that Sarah were there, for an entirely different reason.

The very beginnings of sunset streaked boldly across the sky, turning the water to a fiery hue in its wake. Pure colors dripped and melted into each other, far more perfect than any artist could ever capture on canvas. From where he stood by the Castello, he could see for miles into the water, with the sky turning a very faint blush of pink at the edges. Sunlight turned the mountains around him gold as they pushed out into the sea, and washed over the land. He could only think of one more beautiful sunrise or sunset he’d ever seen, and that had been at the Grand Canyon, while he’d shivered in the snow.

Sarah had shown up then. He’d needed her to show up. Just like, Chuck realized, he needed her right now. Maybe Casey had been right and he’d been subconsciously mad at her. Maybe they’d never work things out. What the hell did that matter? The night before, he might have died, just like he faced death on any mission. If he hadn’t gotten away, he’d be a Chuck-colored stain on a government building wall. On the heels of that thought came perspective: he wasn’t that stain. He was standing, watching the sunset, and above all, Sarah needed to see this, too.

He turned on his heel and headed for the apartment at a pace that was somewhere between a jog and a walk. She’d probably bite his head off, but he didn’t care: she shouldn’t miss the opportunity to see that sunset. Excited for the first time in twenty-four hours, he burst through the door. “Sarah! Hey, you here?”

There was no reply. Chuck frowned. “Sarah?” he called, since the living room was empty. The door to her bedroom was ajar; he pushed on it cautiously in case she’d gone to bed and had some kind of ninja move planned. The last time he’d woken her unexpectedly, after all, he’d ended up with a face-full of couch cushion. But the bedroom, with its double bed, was completely empty, though the sheets had been disturbed. There was a book on top of the covers.

That was different. He’d never once seen Sarah with a book. She usually preferred to read magazines. Chastising himself the entire time for curiosity—and knowing Sarah was probably going to kill him—Chuck edged into the room and picked up the book. The cover was faded. Spider-web lines of age cracked the spine and crawled along the cover. The title made him frown. “Poetry?” he asked aloud. “Really? That’s…”

He didn’t know what that was, but he did know that snooping on a spy was a bad idea, so he moved to put the book down. As he did so, something slipped out and fluttered to the ground at his feet.

Oh crap. He’d dropped her bookmark. Swearing under his breath, he bent to pick it up, and froze, his hand inches from the floor. She’d apparently been using a playing card to mark her place in the book.

And he recognized the pattern.


	66. The Jack of Hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love. — _Neil Gaiman_

**12 JULY 2008  
PIÈ DE MÁ WINE BAR  
20:18 ITA**

The card practically burned a hole in his pocket as Chuck stood with his hand resting on the gate that would lead down to the bar. The tracker in his phone had notified him that Sarah was in the bar somewhere; he’d had to trace his way through Riomaggiore to find it. The most popular feature of the Cinque Terre region was a set of hiking paths connecting the five little villages. Piè De Má Wine Bar obviously capitalized on this, as it sat right off the entrance of most famous of the four paths, the Via dell’Amore. One simply had to make a turn outside the village, go through a gate, and down a set of steps to get to the bar, which was where Chuck was now. And he was, as Morgan would kindly put it, probably about to choke.

How could he not? He had _no idea_ what the card—the Jack of Hearts—meant, but it carried with it an implication hard to ignore. He knew the pattern on the back well: it had come from the deck in his bunker. He’d assumed the card had somehow gotten lost, and had incinerated the rest of the deck, as it was impossible to play Solitaire without a full deck or cheating, and he hated cheating. He hadn’t even used the cheat code on _Sonic the Hedgehog_ as a kid to skip to the end and fight Dr. Robotnik, no matter how annoying it was to collect all of the Chaos Emeralds. Given that he had incinerated the card deck over eighteen months before, it had to mean Sarah had taken it from the bunker on her first visit.

Maybe it had been an accident. Yeah, that was it: she’d taken the card during one of their Go Fish or poker games, and either hadn’t wanted to tell him or hadn’t thought it mattered. It had been a handy bookmark…for a book she was reading nearly three years later…. Sure, he’d met crazier theories. But he had a feeling that Occam’s Razor was probably the way to go with this one. And it made some kind of nervous excitement—excitement he hadn’t truly felt since the first time he’d seen Sarah after his second trip to the bunker—shoot through him. That was why he was standing outside a bar in Italy like a virgin approaching prom night. He didn’t even bother with the routine observation that he was being kind of pathetic. 

If nothing else, the past ten months had taught him that he wasn’t a coward, so he pushed through the gate and headed down the steps. Piè De Má Wine Bar was an open patio bar, jutting out over the water so that people could sit at tables and admire the Mediterranean. It was a little more crowded than Chuck had expected, but he found Sarah rather easily.

She sat at one of the tables by the railing, looking out across the water. West, Chuck thought, back to wherever their homes had been before. She’d changed into something less nondescript: a breezy white shirt that left her arms bare and a skirt that showcased her legs. Her hair was down and it made her seem softer. He blamed the way the sunlight hit her hair for the fact that he stopped and stared, though that was foolish.

He’d carried her picture, sewn into his parka, through Barcelona and Seville and all the way to Siberia. For hours at a time, whenever he’d stopped long enough to rest, he’d denied looking at the picture because it had hurt. And over time, it had become easier not to look at the picture, and by default, not to really look at Sarah and see her for what she was.

The card in his pocket made that impossible now. He swallowed hard as his heart started up again, and headed across the bar.

She didn’t turn. “Yes, Chuck?”

He gave her back a puzzled look. How had she known?

“Your phone pinged mine,” Sarah said, answering his unasked question in that way she had of knowing his thoughts. She turned now and gave him a neutral look, though something seemed…off. Before he could figure out what it was, she looked away.

Chuck took a seat. “The sunset’s gorgeous,” he said. “I came to find you because you had to see it.”

Sarah toasted him with her wineglass. “Got it covered, thanks.”

“I can see that. It’s a nice spot.” He looked around at the other tables, filled by couples enjoying wineglasses and talking in low voices. It made him think back to a mostly empty bar and grill in Washington D.C. when Sarah had asked him what they were to each other and he hadn’t fully answered. Did he regret that? It was hard to tell: it had been an honest answer, at the time. Or had it been? He hadn’t known all of the details. He’d never known all of the details because the card in his pocket told him that he’d never had the full story. 

He decided to cover up his uncertainty with conversation, an old and reliable trick from his arsenal. “It’s stunning. I walked around outside the town a little, down the path. I don’t think Riomaggiore is a real place.”

“It’s pretty,” Sarah said, and finished her wine in one swallow. “I need another one of these. Want one?”

He was tempted; it would be nice to sit and enjoy a sunset with a glass of wine and the view, but while Lincoln was in his head, alcohol had to be off-limits. “No thanks,” he said.

“Oh. Right. I forgot. No alcohol for you.” Sarah turned—and stumbled a little.

He frowned. “Sarah, are you—wait, how many of those have you had?”

“Not that many,” Sarah said quickly. Too quickly.

Chuck blinked. “You’re drunk,” he said.

“No, I’m not.” Sarah wouldn’t meet his eyes. He gaped, incredulous. Sure, he’d seen Sarah have a drink before, maybe two if it was a party. But she never approached even remotely buzzed. The night before, after half an evening out with Carina, she’d been sober as a judge. But now, she looked mortified. “On my way to there. But not drunk yet. I wasn’t expecting you to come find me.”

“So you were…drinking alone?”

“Don’t judge me,” Sarah said. “It’s been a really bad two days, okay? So don’t judge me.”

“Okay.” Chuck held his hands up, though he could feel annoyance growing. She didn’t hold the monopoly on stress, after all. Since it was easier to simply smooth the way, he said, “I’m sorry.”

“You’d better be.” Sarah settled back into her seat and gave him a grumpy look. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you. I thought you’d want to see the sunset.”

Sarah glared. “Looking for a friend to share the sunset with? You’re friends with Casey, too.”

“Casey isn’t exactly somebody who would be moved by the beauty of a sunset,” Chuck said, feeling very much like he’d wandered into an active minefield while wearing a blindfold and carrying only a cane to navigate. “In case you’ve forgotten: he’s John Casey. Big, mean, and his regional dialect comes from the back of the throat.”

Sarah stared moodily into her empty wineglass and didn’t say anything.

“Because he grunts a lo—Sarah, you’re not jealous of Casey for some reason I won’t understand, are you?”

“God, no,” Sarah said, and left the table. “Stay here.” 

After a minute, she returned from the bar with another glass of wine and a bottle of sparkling water for him. “Pretend it’s alcohol or something so I’m not drinking alone.”

Chuck pretended to check the label. “2008,” he said. “Good year for this vintage.” 

Sarah gave him a sort of half-smile at that. He debated as he cracked open the bottle. He could already tell he wasn’t leaving Sarah alone: if she truly wanted him gone, she wouldn’t have brought the water back with her. But maybe it was safer to just sit there and drink his water quietly. And he might have, if his stomach hadn’t rumbled.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

Sarah shook her head. Wisely, he remained silent rather than comment about drinking on an empty stomach. Things were fragile enough right then without him starting an argument. He instead headed for the bar, returning with an armful of appetizers.

Sarah eyed the plates with suspicion.

“Dinner,” Chuck said, arranging plates on the table. “I know it’s strange, but considering that breakfast was maraschino cherries, I think I’m moving up in the world. C’mon, eat. I heard something somewhere about good scenery making food taste even better.”

“So can sex,” Sarah said, and Chuck was glad he hadn’t actually tried to eat anything yet, as it would have gotten stuck in his windpipe when he choked. She gave him a look. “What? It’s a fact.”

“And apparently something you have on your mind.”

“Not completely.”

Chuck cautiously reached for a roll. “What _do_ you have on your mind?” It was a stalling tactic, and he knew it, as the card in his pocket actually felt like it might ignite at any second.

Sarah moved a shoulder. “More than sex, that’s for sure. I like this wine. I keep thinking, Ellie would like this wine, too. She and Devon should be here, drinking this wine.”

“Going to be a little while before she can drink again.”

“Yeah. Any updates?”

“I called again and got to talk to her this time. She’s jealous.” When Sarah’s eyes widened, Chuck held up his hands. “I didn’t say we were in Riomaggiore, just that it was scenic. And pretty much anything’s got to beat staying at a hospital.”

“Yeah. It sucks.” Sarah scowled. “I talked to Beckman. It was definitely Fulcrum.”

“Have they said why? Has there been any communication with any member of the organization to possibly give any kind of motive why they would do something like that?” He wanted the people who had hurt his sister brought to justice. But mostly, he wanted to get them all away from everything. Maybe, if there was a motive, it could be a clue as what to do next.

Sarah shook her head. “That would make too much _sense_.”

“Amen. Does Casey know?”

“Yeah.” 

Silence fell. Chuck knew that the fact that the card was rubbing against his pants pocket was all in his imagination. He had no idea what it meant, and no idea how to hope it _did_ mean what he thought it might. He took a deep breath, twisting the water bottle cap around and around in his hand, and reached for his pocket.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah said out of the blue.

Chuck blinked. “For what?”

“For what? Chuck, I’ve been a raging bitch all day.”

“It was a stressful day for everybody. It’s not a big deal.”

“I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat at the hospital. I’m sorry.”

Chuck waved a hand, like Obi-Wan trying to use the Force. “You are forgiven,” he said as somberly as he could. He dropped the act. “Sarah, seriously, it’s not a big deal. I’m sorry highly exaggerated rumors of my death ruined your evening out with Carina.” 

“Wasn’t your fault.” Sarah chewed on a stuffed date, looking out toward the sunset. She rested her feet on the lower rail. If it weren’t for the dark smudges of exhaustion under her eyes, betraying her jetlag and fatigue, she would have looked perfectly at home. “Shouldn’t have let her talk me into the paint drumming, though. I’ll be cleaning paint out of places I didn’t even know I had for months.”

Chuck’s thoughts took a detour. “That’s good to know,” he said after a second. Testing, he eased back in his seat and crossed his ankles, also resting his feet on the rails. It was impossible to forget the Jack of Hearts, but maybe it was unfair to bring it up while Sarah was under the influence of alcohol. It felt a little disrespectful—or maybe that was just the coward’s way out. And given the inroads Sarah was making on the stuffed dates, maybe getting food in her system would sober her up. He nudged the cheese plate at her as he remembered something. “Hey, so speaking of Carina, what’d you and her go to see Gwen about?”

Sarah, reaching for a piece of cheese to load onto a cracker, stopped moving. Her eyes widened. “Did Gwen tell you about that?”

“I saw you there,” Chuck said. “I was just curious.”

“You were _there_?” Sarah’s eyes widened further. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have had to think you were dead, Chuck!”

“It was Gwen’s call,” Chuck said. “Russ wasn’t sure if you were in on the plan or not, and you know, you don’t get to see your friends much, and it wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. It was just a couple of hours while the Intersect was being uploaded. And like I said, I didn’t want to interrupt your night out with your friend.”

“This is a problem.” Sarah gave him an exasperated look and gesticulated with a piece of cheese, wildly. “I’m always the last to know, and I shouldn’t be. I should be the first to know.”

“They seemed to know what they were doing.”

“I don’t care. I should still be the first to know. There can be other nights out with my friends. I can get a new friend. Hell, I can get a new Carina—no, wait, I really can’t. She’s kind of unique. But the point is: I can replace that stuff. I can’t replace you.”

“I don’t know,” Chuck said, tensing up at the intensity of her stare. “I hear you can buy new Chucks by the pair.”

Sarah sort of laughed, and he felt his body loosen from sheer relief. At least she’d found that funny. It was true that he didn’t understand Sarah on any given day, but this was like Sarah intensified and randomized. And when she gave him _that_ look, he understood that he hadn’t even scratched the tip of the iceberg. After all, she’d carried around a stolen card from his deck in the bunker. They’d only had time to grab their emergency packs before leaving the states, which told him that whatever that book had been, Sarah considered it vital. And by extension, so was the card.

“I will tell you first from now on,” he said. “Whatever it is.”

“Thank you.” Sarah reached across the table, ignoring her still-full wineglass, and stole his bottle of water. The minute she took a sip, a pensive look overtook her. Whatever thought it was that crossed her mind had her staring down at the water bottle. “Carina suggested I go talk to Gwen.”

“About what?”

“I’m thinking about transferring.” 

Chuck felt as though something had punched him in the stomach. “Transfer where?”

“Quantico.” Sarah never looked up from the water bottle.

Dozens of questions rose, but Chuck asked what he felt was the most prevalent: “Why?”

Another long sigh. “Because I’m making you miserable. Or maybe you’re making me miserable. Whatever it is. Something had to give. This is easiest for everyone.”

She could have started tap dancing on the table and he would have been less surprised. He gaped at her. Things hadn’t been happy since he had returned—there really was no way they could have been, all told—but…transfer? Miserable?

“And since Ellie’s so close to figuring out how to reverse-engineer the Intersect, and probably Lincoln, too, you’ll be getting what you want soon, and I want more, you know? I mean, don’t get me wrong,” Sarah said, waving the water bottle around as she gestured, “I am a good spy. A damn good one.”

“And so humble.”

She continued on as though she hadn’t heard him, which was probably the truth. “But with all of the crap that’s happened, I need…something different. So I talked to Gwen, and she’s going to fast-track my application for an instructor position at Quantico. I would have told you.” She thought about it. “Eventually. Eventually, I would have told you. Oh, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m abandoning you.”

“But…aren’t you?”

It took a minute for Sarah to answer. “What’s so great about being a spy?” she asked instead. “It used to be fun.”

“And now it’s not?”

“No,” Sarah said. “Now I have to lie about things I don’t want to lie about in the first place, and I hate it. I just want out.”

She’d expressed dissatisfaction before—he thought of the time in the locker room in Castle, the night before she’d disappeared and their world had changed. But ever since, every time he’d asked about how she felt about still being part of Prometheus, her answers had been either evasive or they had been platitudes. Maybe it wasn’t fair to push while it was clearly the alcohol making her talk, but he was tired of being confused.

“Were you even going to tell me about this?”

“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”

“After how many glasses of wine?”

“Chuck, it’s not like that.”

“It’s exactly like that,” Chuck said. It occurred to him that he was being hypocritical: he’d always fallen on his sword, so to speak, convinced that Sarah and Casey were “stuck” with him, babysitting the lame Lincoln subject who couldn’t even go out into public without wondering if today was going to be the day somebody slipped up to him, whispered a phrase, and turned him into a weapon. Sarah and Ellie had assured him that this wasn’t the case, that Sarah and Casey were fine with it, but hearing the truth, he could feel anger rising. He was mad. He didn’t care if it was because Sarah wasn’t perfect or because she had let him down by not living up to his thoughts or whatever crap Casey was going to spew. He was angry, and he wanted answers, not platitudes, evasions, or half lies. After everything they’d been through together, he deserved at least a modicum clear-cut honesty about _something_. 

So he sat up straight and leaned toward Sarah. “You know what? It occurs to me that this is a two-way street. You want me to tell you things first, I think you should return the favor.”

“And what does that make us to each other, then, Chuck?” Sarah looked at him, her eyes challenging. “Friends?”

“Among other things, yes. But, either way, friends or not, it doesn’t change things. If you want answers first, you give me the same consideration.” “I don’t want to be your friend,” Sarah said.

Chuck’s stomach fell. There it was, he thought, in black and white. His anger gave way to bafflement and a sort of sadness. “Oh.”

Sarah rolled her eyes at him. “Chuck,” she said, reaching to grab his wrist as he moved to stand. “Get with the picture. I’m saying that I think you should be my boyfriend again.”

Her fingers seemed impossibly warm against his skin. “What?” he asked.

“I’m sorry to go all middle school on you—well, not really that sorry. It fits, don’t you think? We’re, like, one step away from passing notes in the hall with how bad we are at communicating.”

Chuck felt insult rise. “You know, I’m doing the best I can, Sarah. I’m sorry if you think I’m too juvenile.”

“Chuck, I’m not talking about you. Hell.” Sarah pushed her hands through her hair. 

“Then what _are_ you talking about? Just…tell me.”

Sarah gestured, wildly. “You think I want to be this way?”

“I don’t know _what_ you want! Every time I assume something, it turns out to be the opposite, okay?” Chuck gave her an exasperated look. “Stop making me guess, Sarah. Please.”

“You want to know what I want?”

Chuck pushed his hands through his hair. “I just said so, didn’t I?” 

“I want you to be my boyfriend,” Sarah said. “Things were just better then. Okay, maybe they weren’t because I was lying to you about what the bosses wanted me to do to you and about Lincoln, and it _sucked_ knowing that and knowing one day you were going to hate me, but you don’t hate me, do you? Not really. I mean, look at you. You’re here, looking out for me at a silly wine bar in a town you’ve already mispronounced three times, and I don’t think you want to be just friends either.”

His first instinct was to ask her how to pronounce the town name, if he kept saying it wrong. Thankfully, he had some sense of self-preservation, and the rest of her words filtered through. There seemed to be only one answer. With a hand that was only shaking a little, he took the card out of his pocket and set it in the center of the table. “I think you need to explain this, Sarah.”

Her eyes cut to the card; she went still again. “Have you been going through my things?”

“No,” Chuck said, and realized that the card was kind of proof to the contrary. “Well, sort of. I wasn’t spying on you or anything. I saw the book on your bed and was curious about what you were reading—your door was open, don’t look at me like that—and the card fell out. It’s not important. What _is_ important is that this card, it’s from the bunker. My bunker. That pattern isn’t a common one, and this is the card that was missing from my deck, which means you had to have had it since your first visit.”

“I…” Sarah looked from his face to the card on the table. All of the blood had drained out of her face. She didn’t reach for her wine, though.

He knew the smartest way to get the truth out of Sarah was to wait it out, but impatience made him lean forward. Somehow, however she answered, that was important. He had to _know_ the answer to questions he wasn’t sure he knew how to ask. “What does it mean?”

“It…I…”

“When did you even take it? I never saw you.”

“I palmed it,” Sarah said, sighing. She pulled her wineglass close to fiddle with the stem. “As Bryce and I—as we were leaving. The card deck was on the table and I took the top card. It just happened to be the Jack of Hearts.”

“Why? I have a feeling it’s not because you’re anti-Solitaire.” He wasn’t breathing, Chuck realized, and he didn’t intend to start until she gave him a clear answer. He gripped the edge of the table.

“No. No, I am definitely not anti-Solitaire,” Sarah said, and met his gaze, completely sober. “I took the card because I didn’t want to leave the bunker empty-handed. You gave me a scarf, yes, but…Bryce, he was supposed to take me to Cabo on that trip. And for a long time, I thought that would have been easier.”

Chuck’s stomach plummeted. He could imagine, too clearly, a perfect trip to Cabo, all the sun-soaked beaches. Perfect super-spy Bryce Larkin and Sarah Walker, enjoying their perfect trip together.

“And you know, it probably would have been. But I don’t regret it.”

“Why not?”

“Because for every bit of trouble that trip caused—and trust me, it caused a lot of trouble—I met you. And I guess, even at the time, I knew it meant…something, so I wanted something to carry with me, something small. Something that meant something. So I took a card from the deck we used to play Go Fish.” Sarah’s smile finally turned self-deprecating. “Tang,” she said. “It’s what they give astronauts, you know.”

Chuck finally took a breath. Part of his brain was still stunned into shocked silence, but the rest of him was very, very warm in a way that had nothing to do with the last glow of sunset on the Mediterranean or the beauty all around him. It was difficult for him to recognize it, as it wasn’t something he’d truly felt since February.

“Oh, thank God,” he said. “It did mean something. I was worried you might just have sticky fingers.”

Sarah looked distressed. “Chuck, I would never—”

“Not everyone is worth ruining hundreds of games of Solitaire for, after all. In fact,” Chuck said, and felt a grin spread over his face, “I can think of only one person that would be worth it, for me.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Sarah asked, looking breathless. “Because I mean it, don’t you dare mess with me—”

“I’m not.”

“Because if you are, I swear to you—”

“I’m _not_ ,” Chuck said. He leaned forward and, needing some contact, any contact, grabbed Sarah’s wrist, gently. Her hand went limp under his. “I honestly didn’t know what to think when I found the card. I still don’t know what I think, but I’m not messing with you. I wouldn’t dream of it. You kept that for three years?”

“Yes.” She wouldn’t meet his eye.

There were so many questions, but the main one on his mind was, “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

Sarah gave him an exasperated look. “Because _I_ can barely handle it without thinking I’m some sort of crazy person. The last thing I wanted to do was scare you off, too.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s kind of sweet.” Chuck picked up the card and looked at it. “Though, a little overwhelming.”

“You think?” Sarah pushed at her forehead, and Chuck wondered if the wine was giving her a headache. He nudged the water bottle over to her side of the table; she took it automatically, though she didn’t drink. “The very first thing they teach you at the Farm is how to lie. Not just how to lie, but how to conceal big lies.”

Chuck’s stomach, which had been leaping giddily, began to churn.

“And the best way to conceal a big lie is to tell the truth about everything else,” Sarah said. “Sure, you conceal one fact here, but you reveal another there. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” Chuck said. “Though I’m not sure why you’re saying it.”

“I lied to you about Lincoln, my big lie, and what the bosses wanted me to do to you. I had my reasons initially, and maybe it was wrong and maybe it wasn’t. But the thing is, to lie to you, I got to tell the truth. And it was…freeing.” Sarah did take a drink now. She held his gaze, though. “I got to tell you things that I never really shared with anybody else.”

Chuck thought back to the way things had been before his second trip to the bunker and more specifically, to their first date, at the Smithsonian. “About Harvard, and things like that?”

Sarah nodded, looking away now. “Things like that,” she said. “And I might not have told you all about that if I hadn’t been keeping bigger things from you. Like Project Lincoln. The thing is, everything I told you was real. But…now it doesn’t matter.”

He was still lost. “Why not?”

“I’ve seen the way you look at me, Chuck. I lied about one thing, I could be lying about something else. So when you ask why I didn’t tell you, that’s why.”

“Because I would automatically assume you’re lying?” Chuck asked, still confused.

Sarah looked him directly in the eye. “Yes.”

“But I…don’t…” Chuck set the card on the table again, as it suddenly seemed a lot heavier than it looked. He gave Sarah a bewildered look. “I don’t automatically assume you’re lying.”

“You wonder sometimes.”

“I’m not perfect,” Chuck said. “And I don’t wonder. Not when it matters.”

“I couldn’t take that risk.” 

“Why n—”

“Because I love you.”

Chuck’s brain stuttered to a halt at the worst possible moment. For a second, time existed outside of him, and he was suspended, sitting at a table while the Mediterranean crashed against the rocks below the wine bar, staring at Sarah Walker. Every single argument he’d been about to make was suddenly dashed to pieces.

“Could you,” he said, and he had to clear his throat because his voice was suddenly hoarse, “possibly repeat that?”

Sarah turned bright red. Instead of embarrassment, however, her look was pure defiance. “You heard me.”

“I’m not sure I did, not quite—correctly.”

“I said I love you.” Sarah tilted her chin up, and her eyes were a challenge. “And that’s why I don’t want to be friends. I thought I could. For—hell, for three years, I tried to keep it all in a box like a good little spy, but I’m not going to do—”

“I love you, too,” Chuck said.

“—that anymore. I just can’t, don’t you—wait a second, what did you just say?”

For a second, he was tempted not to answer right away. He felt both intensely grounded and so happy that he could practically feel his body becoming unhinged from reality, but he didn’t care. For once in his life, he didn’t question. He just smiled. “What was it you told me, once? Just say the word?”

Somehow, she managed to groan, though he wasn’t sure how, through her breathless smile. 

“Technically, in this case, it’s words, but—” That was as far as he got before Sarah rounded the table and hauled him to his feet. Laughing, he rose and met her halfway and they made complete fools out of themselves in an Italian bar. He couldn’t bring himself to care. Ever since he’d found that card, there had been a feeling in his chest that he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge, but now he could claim it for what it was: it had been hope. He kissed Sarah until he literally heard applause—and realized that everybody in the bar was cheering and cat-calling.

Sarah flushed a deeper red. Somehow, she managed to tilt her head in acknowledgment to the other patrons, most of whom laughed, though she never relinquished her grip on Chuck’s shirt. “We really need to get out of here,” she said under her breath to Chuck.

“No kidding,” he said, but he couldn’t resist: he kissed her again, and it was nearly two minutes later that Sarah recovered and dragged him away from the bar, plucking the card from the table as she went.

**12 JULY 2008  
IL NIDO D’AMORE  
22:37 ITA**

There was something to be said for an afterglow.

Chuck didn’t know how long he could lie there, doing nothing but tracing random patterns on Sarah’s back with the tips of his fingers, but he figured forever sounded good. Even if the bed wasn’t exactly the most comfortable in the world—though that hadn’t mattered earlier, at all—he was…happy. A little overwhelmed, but he was trying not to think about that overmuch. The entire time he’d known Sarah, there had always been a sliver of doubt, wondering _why_ she had picked him when there were so many better options out there, wondering how it was that she found the energy to keep going above and beyond the call of duty for him. To know that the entire time, she’d had her doubts, too, and had even seemed to dislike him at points, that somehow made things better.

Maybe he wasn’t the only crazy one here. He was perfectly fine with that.

She made a sleepy noise in the back of her throat. “Can hear you thinking,” she said, shifting a little. They’d kicked off most of the blankets with their earlier activities, but she didn’t seem cold. She shifted again, though, settling against him. “This bed sucks.”

Chuck laughed. “It really does. We could try the one in the other room.”

“I don’t know how you’d fit in that one, let alone the both of us.”

He laughed again.

Sarah rested her chin on his shoulder, still looking sleepy. “It’d take some interesting acrobatics,” she said, and she was clearly mulling it over. “Maybe we could make it work.”

“I think at this stage, you’d fall asleep on me.” And he wasn’t sure he was ready for another round—oh, he wanted one, that was for sure. But it had become wincingly obvious that it had been six years for him and three years for her. Sarah had managed to laugh it off convincingly enough by pointing out that it was fine: they now had something to aspire to. And it would take a lot of practice to get there.

That was another thing he found perfectly fine.

“No, I w-wouldn’t.” Sarah’s sentence cut off with a yawn. “Good thing I’m so tired, though. This bed is ridiculously hard.”

“It is.”

“Maybe the floor would be…preferable…” Sarah’s words were slurring now. She’d sobered up during their conversation—and had made it a point to tell him so at least twice, in case he was worried that he was possibly taking advantage—but it had been a ridiculously long, travel-filled day. Running a mission on no sleep hadn’t helped. Chuck wasn’t terribly surprised when she burrowed into the one remaining blanket they had left and fell asleep.

In truth, he should probably be doing the same. Lord knew, he was tired. But he was also wide awake and completely full of energy. If he closed his eyes, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t just lie there all night, marveling and delighting. He was happy. Sarah loved him.

So he continued to lie there, staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling, still stroking Sarah’s back because he could. Sure, the rest of his life was a mess. Even this, here, now, though it felt perfect, was messy. He and Sarah both brought their baggage to the relationship, and given the paths they’d walked, they’d accumulated a lot between them. He’d had no idea just how deep Sarah’s own neuroses, which she’d brought to light in startling detail, had gone. And most days, his own head was such a jumble that it was going to take a therapist years to fix. If they screwed this up…

He didn’t want to think about that, so he deliberately set it aside. Sarah had said she loved him. He loved her. Maybe it was the stuff of cheesy romantic ballads, but they could find a way. They were smart. 

Outside of the bedroom, his life was a mess, too. He had no idea what was going on with the government, save that Charles Carmichael was listed as a casualty of the tragic explosion at the DNI. It had been a Fulcrum strike, but why?

Maybe, he thought, he could get some answers. It wasn’t like he could sleep now.

It took a little creativity to extract himself from Sarah, but he managed. He pulled on shorts and grabbed the laptop they’d been given in Pisa. A quick virus scan showed that there were at least four monitoring devices on it, as well as a keystroke tracker. He disabled that first, then shredded the rest of the programs like tissue paper.

His first step was to set up an alias that Dave would understand immediately. Since the other man had used the word “frell” the day before, he settled on the name JohnSunDethronesRygel and sent a message winging across the Atlantic.

It took Dave less than thirty seconds to respond with a “Thank God you’re alive” message. Chuck sent a coded message in reply, along with a head’s up that he was about to violate some heavy government security.

Dave’s reply was a resigned, “Go for it.”

With that sort of permission out of the way, Chuck hacked into the Metro’s secure website and hunted up the video feeds, searching around. Of course, the time-stamped footage from when Señor Saliva and his goons had taken Chuck through the station was missing—Graham had managed to see to that much, at least—but with a little creative problem solving, he found a camera angle that captured all of Señor Saliva’s men as they searched the stations for Chuck.

He grabbed screenshots of all of them and sent them through all of the major databases. It only took a minute for the results to come back: he scanned through them. Mercenaries, he saw, all of them with a few hits on their rap-sheets. A couple were ex-military. It took a little digging, but eventually, he found a connection to Graham: they all had the same time period redacted from their records eight years previous. A deeper look told him they’d all worked freelance on a CIA project in Turkey, led by one Langston Graham.

So he was right. Graham had sent them, after all. He sent that information to a secure drive and switched gears.

Though he was trying to be quiet, Sarah still stirred. She cracked one eye open.

Chuck froze, guiltily. “Sorry,” he said, not sure why he was whispering. “Was I being too loud?”

“No, s’just funny.” Sarah shook her head, closing her eyes. “Also what I kind of expected. Don’t ever change, Chuck.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said, but he figured she was probably already asleep again. It took him a minute for his attention to return to the computer, though he couldn’t imagine a soul would blame him for being distracted. But once he returned to the computer, he sifted through the NSA’s servers until he found the memo he was searching for: a list of those deceased in the Intersect explosion.

Charles Carmichael was the third name on the list. He swallowed hard and kept scanning. When he recognized another name, he went cold. A third name stood out to him, until he knew four in all. Most of the dead had been in the Intersect room, he saw. Two listed among the casualties had been scientists in the other room, probably those closest to the blast. He thanked any and all deities listening that Ellie had been to the back of the room. She had survived.

The other four members of Project Lincoln hadn’t been so lucky. Whiskey, Uniform, Gamma, Zulu. They were listed by their civilian names, but he’d spent over a month staring at their call-signs and lists of things that controlled them, as well as their Lincoln-trained abilities. By the end of that month in the bunker, he’d known more about them than he had about himself. Zulu, who’d been stationed in North Africa. Whiskey had been in South America. Scientists and therapists had been working with them in D.C., trying to get them better. Gwen hadn’t talked about it much, but Chuck knew it hadn’t been going well. He, Delta, had been the only one to change, among them.

And now the rest of them were dead.

Chuck slowly shut the lid of the laptop. He hadn’t made a connection to the other Lincoln subjects—how could he, when he still didn’t remember the two years he’d known them?—but it just seemed unbelievably unfair. Here he was, in the most beautiful place he’d seen since Greece, in bed with an amazing woman that loved him, and everybody else that had gone through the same program with him was dead.

They needed to get away from the Intersect. It was toxic. Any branch of it destroyed anything it touched, systematically and gleefully. Sarah had said Ellie was close to a solution, and Chuck had the possibility of another solution. He nearly reached for his wallet to grab the Orion ads, but Sarah stirred in her sleep, moving closer to him, and he remembered he’d made a promise to tell her everything first. Besides, he wanted her opinion on it anyway.

He set the laptop under the bed and stood to gather the rest of the blankets and dump them back on the bed. He was hungry, but they hadn’t stocked the apartment with food yet, and he wasn’t sure he could trust the tap water here. So, trying to forget about that, and the horrible news of the rest of the Project Lincoln subjects, he crawled back into bed beside Sarah, cuddled against her, and closed his eyes. 


	67. Complicated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made. — _E.M. Forster_

**13 JULY 2008  
RIOMAGGIORE, ITALY  
11:13 ITA**

It was hunger—of a different sort than the kind that had woken them up that morning—that eventually drove them from the apartment. Since Casey had called twice, wanting a team meeting, they agreed to meet up with him at one of the restaurants down the hill from their apartments. He beat them there, which Sarah claimed was Chuck’s fault.

He denied it, of course. He hadn’t been the only one unable to keep his hands to himself. Even so, they were nearly fifteen minutes late when they pushed their way through groups of tourists grabbing an early lunch.

Casey, sitting at a table in the back and glaring at the menu in front of him with his arms folded across his chest, looked up at them. For a split-second, there was silence (other than the tourists chattering in the background). Casey broke this by groaning. “Figures.”

Chuck wordlessly held out a hand toward Sarah. With a grumble of her own, she dug into her pocket and handed him five euros. “Told you,” he said, and pulled her chair out before taking his own seat. “Morning, Casey.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Casey said. “Any of it. Do you understand me?”

“Not even if we give you a cigar first?” Sarah asked, her eyes alight with humor. She tilted her head, obviously considering. “Actually, no, that might be bad. We’d give you lung cancer.”

Casey groaned again. “I hate you both so much right now.”

“What’s good here, do you think?” Chuck asked, picking up the menu. Thankfully, Casey had requested English menus; he still didn’t speak a word of Italian (though Sarah had corrected him on the pronunciation of Riomaggiore), but he wouldn’t have put it past Casey to torture him with an Italian-only menu. Given the fact that the man now had a face like a thunderclap, this sort of consideration had probably just gone out of the window. He glanced at Sarah. He didn’t mind, he found.

“Try the pizza.”

“Yeah? It’s good here?”

“It’s Italy,” Sarah said. “And that way I can get pasta and steal some of your pizza.”

Chuck raised an eyebrow at that. Casey groaned a third time.

“So this is a thing,” he said, looking glum. “You two, back together.”

“Was it so bad the first time?” Sarah asked.

“At least I don’t have to deal with the two of you violating my apartment this time.” The blood in Casey’s face drained out of it abruptly. “Oh, hell. Our apartments share a wall.”

“Don’t worry, Casey,” Chuck said. “We’ll keep it down.”

“We will?” Sarah asked.

Chuck immediately felt heat flood through him at the look on her face. For Casey’s sake, though, he kept his eyes on the menu. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Casey, who looked as though he’d prefer to face a group Navy SEALS with only a sponge and some sarcasm to dealing with any more of the Chuck-and-Sarah antics. Chuck thought he heard the NSA agent mutter something about slow death and discovering the new form of waterboarding.

When the waiter appeared, he ordered a pizza with artichokes and a few other things he couldn’t pronounce. He was feeling adventurous. Sarah, of course, ordered in Italian, and Casey got the blandest thing on the menu.

Once they had their drinks, Chuck raised his glass. “To Italy?”

Sarah clicked her glass against his. Casey, on the other hand, glowered. “I’m not toasting this country, Bartowski.”

“Oh, c’mon, Case. We’re on vacation.” He’d gotten a text in the middle of the night from Devon: Ellie was fine, she was being moved to a regular room. As awful as things could get, right then, they weren’t bad.

Casey’s glower deepened; reluctantly, he tapped his glass against Sarah’s and then Chuck’s. “But not to Italy,” he said. “I’ll toast to vacation. God knows we need one.”

“Amen.”

“That said, work’s not over quite yet. We have some things to talk about.”

And that, Chuck thought, was the end of the frivolity. “I did some research last night. Er, not quite legally,” he said. When neither Casey nor Sarah seemed particularly perturbed by this, he continued on. “The men that grabbed me were hired by Graham. It took a little bit of work to find, but they’re ex-freelancers for the CIA. Graham used them on a project a few years back. Could be they owed him a favor. So that’s the first mystery down.”

“He wasn’t going to let you go,” Casey said, nodding slowly.

“Didn’t look like it, no.”

“Have we received confirmation that it was indeed Fulcrum behind the attack?” Sarah asked, changing the subject.

“Seeing as the words that flashed across the screen before they uploaded the Intersect and things went to pot were, ‘Fulcrum thanks you,’ I think it’s a pretty safe guess,” Casey said.

That was a gutsy move, Chuck thought. He absorbed the knowledge with a nod, thinking once more that they really needed to get out of the Intersect game and away from all of it. “Do they know where the bomb was planted?”

“In the cipher.”

“The what?” Chuck and Sarah asked.

“It’s an essential piece of the Intersect technology,” Casey said. He sounded like he was repeating a briefing, which answered the question of whether he’d talked to Beckman. “It was stolen two weeks ago. Agents in California tracked down a well-known criminal named Colt, and retrieved the cipher from him. Turns out it was an incendiary device.”

Chuck and Sarah stared.

“What?” Casey asked.

“This device was stolen by somebody and they didn’t think to check it over before they plugged it into a system where they were uploading sensitive information?” Chuck asked.

“I’m sure they checked it over,” Casey said, but he didn’t look sure. Uneasy silence settled in over the table as they pondered the possibilities. “Either way, it happened, and we have to deal with the fall-out.”

“The fall-out being that it killed the rest of the Lincoln subjects,” Chuck said. When Casey and Sarah both stopped and looked at him, he swallowed. He still couldn’t believe it. He was the only one left of Omaha and Lincoln—apart from the two subjects that had ended up in the mental hospital from Omaha. It was a sobering and almost terrifying reality. “I looked the list up last night. The other four were on it. I think they wanted them to upload the Intersect, and have a failsafe like the one I have.”

“Poor bastards,” Casey said. A sense of quiet settled over all three of them as they considered it. “Nobody deserved that.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said. Sarah reached across the table and linked her fingers through his, and this time, Casey didn’t make a face at the public display of affection.

He did, however, straighten. “Provided we aren’t discovered in the next few days, they’ll move your sister over here with the rest of us for a little relaxation.”

“Really?” Chuck asked, genuinely surprised, and pleased, at the thought.

“Right now, we’re Beckman’s problem team. It’s easier to pay us to stay out of the way.”

Chuck figured that Beckman was actually paying _him_ to stay out of the way, as trouble followed him like a rat after the Pied Piper, but he didn’t remark. It was a paid vacation. It felt like heaven. “I can live with that,” he said.

“Assuming Walker doesn’t kill you,” Casey said.

Sarah rolled her eyes at him.

“Speaking of that, I kind of have something I want to bring up,” Chuck said, clearing his throat. He’d thought about bringing up the newspaper clippings, which he now had in his pocket, all morning, but Sarah had distracted him. And maybe it was better to get it all out of the way at once. “But both of you have to promise not to kill me.”

“No promises,” Casey said.

“Seconded,” Sarah said.

Chuck looked at the suddenly-stony countenances of his teammates and sighed. “Only fair. A few months ago, I was contacted in the bunker.”

“By whom?” Sarah asked.

“A guy named Orion.” Since neither Casey nor Sarah looked as though they recognized the name, Chuck plunged on. “He said he created the Intersect, and that he could help me.”

“By doing what?”

“By taking it out.”

Silence fell over the table. Then the questions began to tumble, one over the other.

“Why didn’t you tell us about this before?”

“You didn’t think to mention this before now?”

“How do you know who he says he is?”

“How on earth was he able to contact you in the bunker when we weren’t?”

“Guys!” Chuck held his hands up for peace. “I don’t know. He’s got to be really _insanely_ good with computers, whoever he is, since he took apart my firewalls like tinker toys. He then offered to help me.”

“Did you say yes?” Sarah asked.

Chuck shook his head. 

“Why?”

“Because it’s the only thing holding Lincoln back.” Chuck glanced down at his wrist, and at the nautical rope bracelet concealing the tattoos. “I couldn’t take the risk. But if Ellie thinks she can remove both at the same time…. Maybe this guy can help. If he created the original Intersect, the fact that he’s even still alive is a big deal, considering everything that’s happened to everybody else involved.”

He could see both of them working through that, Casey with his arms once again across his chest and Sarah frowning intently at her water glass. “How do we know if we can trust him?” Sarah asked.

Casey nodded. “And how do we find him? If he can out-hack you, Bartowski, then he’s only going to be found if he wants to be found.”

“We could try setting up a meet. He left me a way to get in touch.” Chuck pulled the newspaper clippings from his pocket and held them out. Casey took them, but before the conversation could continue, their food arrived. Chuck wasted no time digging into his pizza. He was so hungry, he was a little surprised that his stomach hadn’t rumbled all throughout the conversation. Next to him, Sarah tucked in with fervor as well.

“So this is why you insisted on buying that commie rag,” Casey said, ignoring his food while he thumbed through the clippings. “What do they have in common?”

“Usually they have to do with hunting of some type. The first one was a clue—they all came on prime-numbered days.”

“I’ll see if we can get today’s _Post_ , then. You’ve deciphered it?”

Chuck nodded. Sarah held her hand out for the clippings, eating with her free hand as she studied each paper in turn.

“Why didn’t you tell us about this?” Casey asked, for the second time.

“I turned him down. I didn’t think it was relevant.”

“You collected the ads.”

“I hedged my bets.”

“Bartowski—”

“Casey,” Sarah said, setting down her fork. “We’re _all_ going to make an effort to be a little more honest in the future. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Chuck said quickly, though Casey’s glare didn’t lessen. “Last secret, I promise. Well, about Intersect stuff. You already said you don’t want to hear about what Sarah and I—”

“I’m going to hurl,” Casey said.

“See?” Chuck said.

“Boys.” Sarah tapped her water glass with her knife, making both Casey and Chuck look over. “Back to the subject at hand, please. I think we should set up a meet with Orion.”

“Are you sure about that? Right now, the world thinks Chuck is dead,” Casey said.

Sarah shrugged. “Whoever this person is, he hacked a secure government bunker. Not only that, he knew Chuck’s identity, and what he is. If there’s one person we’re not going to fool by pretending Chuck is dead, it’s him. And I for one am curious.”

“You just want your boy-toy to transfer to Quantico with you,” Casey said, mostly under his breath.

Chuck blinked at him. “You knew about that?”

Sarah, on the other hand, narrowed her eyes. “When did you talk to Carina?”

“This morning. Somebody had to convince her not to come out here and blow all of our covers.” Casey rolled his eyes. “And before you ask how I managed that, I’ll tell you one thing: don’t ask. Ever. Are we clear?”

Chuck, of course, immediately wanted to ask. He figured it was safer to stay on topic. “I agree with Sarah.”

“Go figure,” Casey said.

“Fulcrum is becoming more erratic and more aggressive. For some reason, they don’t want the government having Intersect technology, and I don’t think they’ll take kindly to the government having an actual Intersect.” Chuck tapped his temple. “If this guy can help—and if he can take Lincoln out at the same time—I say we go for it.”

Casey nodded. “Now the question is: what do we tell Beckman?”

“Nothing,” Chuck and Sarah said immediately.

Casey sighed.

“We’re on vacation,” Sarah said. “She doesn’t need to know.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said. When that didn’t do anything to lessen Casey’s depression, he leaned forward. “Look at it this way: aren’t you _supposed_ to meet interesting new people on vacation?”

“Fine,” Casey said. “Though I get to bring any and all firepower that I want to the meeting, and that is not negotiable.”

“We wouldn’t ever dream of getting in between you and your guns,” Chuck said with a completely straight face. “I’ll set up the meet later. I want to get a burn phone first. Do you think there’s a place around here to get one?”

“If not, there might be one in Manarola or Monteresso,” Sarah said. “We can take the train over and walk around. Do you want to come, Casey?”

For a second, Casey actually looked tempted, which surprised Chuck, but then the other agent muttered something about love germs, and that offer was declined. Once again, Chuck wanted to ask exactly what had gone on with Carina—he hadn’t forgotten the mention of Prague the first time he’d met the DEA agent—but it was safer just to eat his lunch, even if Sarah stole part of his pizza. He snagged some pasta as payback.

“Check in every once in awhile so I know you’re not dead of dehydration,” he said once Sarah had asked the waiter for the check. “And whatever you do, don’t set the meet here, for God’s sake. We can travel.”

“Got it.”

They parted ways at the restaurant, with Casey heading back to their apartments and Chuck and Sarah wandering down the hill in search of a shop that might sell phones and SIM cards. “We should probably remember to get food while we’re out,” he said, smiling at her. “You don’t seem to want to let me leave the apartment. We might need supplies for a few weeks.”

Sarah laughed, but Chuck noticed she didn’t deny it. His eyebrows went up.

Finding nothing in Riomaggiore, they debated. Since shops had already closed for Italy’s four-hour midday break, Sarah suggested they walk over to Manarola. The temperature was about ten degrees cooler than it usually was in Washington D.C., which made for pleasant weather, especially with the sea breeze. “It’s supposed to be the easiest of the paths,” she said, consulting the map down by the train station. “And what else are we doing, anyway?”

“Point,” Chuck said. They had to purchase tickets at the entrance to the path, the Via dell’Amore, so he let Sarah do that, listening absently as she chatted in Italian yet again. He stuffed the paper ticket she handed over into his pocket. “How’d you learn Italian?”

“Monterey,” Sarah said. There was a flicker of self-consciousness across her face as she did so, and he realized that she hadn’t revealed that to anybody else before. “I, ah, spent a summer there in college.”

He grabbed her hand, lacing their fingers together. “They teach Italian in Monterey?”

“Hmm,” Sarah said, looking down at their hands, but she was smiling. The Via dell’Amore was paved and well-trodden, cut into the side of the mountain so that the sea spread below. If Chuck turned, he’d see the edge of the roof of the wine bar from the night before. He didn’t turn. There were so many more fascinating things ahead of him, including Sarah. She looked past him at the sea. “I was there to study Russian, actually. It was one of my first covers.”

“Oh, really?” Though he’d seen her shift personalities in a blink, he still sometimes had a hard time imagining her as anybody but Sarah Walker, even though that wasn’t even her given name. It was almost like she was this immovable rock in his mind, anchoring him, as Sarah Walker and Sarah Walker alone. “Who were you, then? Foreign exchange student?”

“It was a military school. I was an Airman. Air Force. That was always the branch they picked for me.”

Chuck laughed. “Air Force, Army, Marines. All we need is a Navy man, and maybe a Coast Guard lady, and we’ll be set.”

“We do seem to like to gather people,” Sarah said, shaking her head. The path took them under an overhang, where the walls were covered with wildly colorful graffiti in all languages. “I was there to study Russian and Arabic, but as Steph, I didn’t really have that great of a social life, so I picked up Italian from my roommate. I haven’t had to use it much, though.”

“Really? You sound pretty fluent to me.”

“Only in Italian swearing.”

“Really helpful in Italian bar-fights. Or maybe the running of the bulls.”

Sarah gave him the side-eye. “That’s in Spain.”

Chuck winced at his gaffe. He knew the festival took place in Spain every year, but for some reason, it had just slipped out. “I think swearing should be considered a universal language when you are literally being chased by a bull.”

The look she gave him told him she knew exactly what he was doing, but she let it go with a smile. “I think it would be interesting to do that, actually. I almost went one year, but we got called away for a mission in Sarajevo.”

“You want to willingly be chased by a bull?”

“Of course. Don’t you?”

“A bull _dog_ , maybe. A fat one. With three legs, and only if I am one hundred percent sure it can’t catch me, or if I’m armed with a really big, meaty bone.” Chuck shook his head. “The people that do that are crazy.”

“Wimp,” Sarah said, smiling.

“Damn straight.”

They walked on for a minute and Sarah shook her head. “A three-legged bulldog?”

“Of course. He’s a dog looking for the man who shot his paw.”

Sarah groaned. “Where the hell do you get these?”

“Laffy Taffy wrappers, mainly.” He had to smile. “Steph, huh? Short for Stephanie?”

“Stephanie Wilkins.”

“Good initials.”

“Sarah Walker,” Sarah said, smiling.

“I was talking about your gun,” Chuck said, and laughed as Sarah shoved him into the railing. Since he was still holding her hand, he had no choice but to tug her with him, and standing as they were, it was only natural to kiss her. He felt her smile against his lips before they heard a spate of muttered Italian as tourists had to move around them.

“What do they expect?” he asked once they’d started walking again. “It’s literally called the lover’s path. We were making sure it lives up to its name.”

“Was I complaining?” Sarah asked.

It was a hike to Manarola, the next town over. Since most of the shops would be closed anyway, they took their time, wandering when the path led down to the stone beaches below. Sarah seemed to be trying the honesty hat on for size, for she either offered tidbits about her past that she hadn’t shared with Chuck before or simply answered his questions when he asked. At one point, they wandered down a set of steps that didn’t go all the way to the beach, instead forming a little balcony below the path. Sarah leaned against the railing, looking out at the ocean. Since there wasn’t much room on the ledge, Chuck stood right behind her, resting his chin on her shoulder. It was probably too warm for that, but he didn’t care.

“I must admit, I’m having a little bit of a hard time believing this is real,” she said after a few moments of quiet. “Like I’m going to wake up and be back in D.C. or something.”

“It’s a bit surreal,” Chuck said. “But I like it. Almost like a dream.”

He felt Sarah move—as if she were chuckling? Warily, he edged forward to get a look at her face: she was definitely amused at something. “What is it?”

“I probably shouldn’t tell you. I’m not sure you can handle it.”

“Is it bad?” Chuck asked, confused.

“Not bad. It’s…” She shook her head, hitting Chuck on the nose with her hair and laughing apologetically. “It’s bizarre, that’s all.”

“What is it? You’re making me a little nervous here.”

Sarah turned in place, so they were face to face, their bodies aligned. Her look turned devilish, and Chuck abruptly forgot everything up to and including his own name. He shook his head, a bit dazedly, but Sarah only made it worse by smirking more broadly. “Nervous, huh?” she asked.

The day before, he might have shuffled his feet. Now, he tried and failed to raise an eyebrow. Two could play at that game, though admittedly, she was probably a champion game-master to his noob-level skills.

“I might as well tell you,” she said. “You’ll go crazy wondering, otherwise.”

“Yes,” Chuck said, as that was a very real possibility.

“Remember the bunker? That first night?” 

He bit his tongue before he could retort that he wasn’t likely to forget the first time he’d met her.

“I went to take a nap while you and Bryce caught up,” Sarah said.

“Yes, and?” Chuck asked, confused as to where this was going. Had she stolen something _else_ from the bunker? It would have been remarkable: calling the space “cramped” had been an exaggeration of generous proportions.

“Well.” Sarah tucked her bottom lip under her teeth, and Chuck’s eyes were immediately drawn to the feature. He looked back up, muzzily, to find her grinning at him. “I kind of had a sex dream then.”

He had to be hearing things. Why was she telling him this? She’d been with Bryce, then, so that meant the dream had to be—

“About you,” Sarah said, and, ducking under his arm, headed for the stairs.

It took three seconds for normal brain function to return. By the time said normal brain function had brought up and dismissed all of the ways he might have misunderstood that, Sarah was at the top of the stairs. He stared up, helplessly. Had she….had that really…was she…?

“Chuck?” Sarah asked, her voice pure innocence. “Plan on joining me?”

He moved automatically, heading for the stairs and thankfully not stumbling. He remembered the trip to the bunker—it was hard to forget, even if he’d wanted to, and he definitely did not. If his timeline was correct, Sarah had talked to him and Bryce for a couple of hours, and then she had disappeared to sleep.

Not just to sleep, his brain chipped in helpfully. To dream.

She patted his arm, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. This only made her giggle.

Chuck was many things, and chief among them was a realist. He liked to think he was pretty open-eyed about himself and his own abilities. And while Sarah certainly had seemed to enjoy herself the night before, he couldn’t deny the reality that it had been six years for him. And if she’d had a sex dream three years before…

Maybe she’d dreamed of really awful sex. He could only hope.

“Erm,” he said, and his voice squeaked a little. He cleared his throat. “How…”

“Yes, Chuck?” He wished her eyes wouldn’t glitter so brightly. The ocean, or her shirt, whatever, it was, they were impossibly blue today. And they made it difficult for him to think.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how…how was I?”

Sarah rocked back on her heels, her face taking on a thoughtful look. When she eyed him from head to toe, more than a little lasciviously, he felt the blush start somewhere in his core. But she grinned at him. “Pretty good,” she said.

Chuck’s stomach sank.

“But,” Sarah said, stepping up to him and kissing his chin, lingering close to him, “I think I prefer the reality more.”

**13 JULY 2008  
OUTSIDE OF CORNIGLIA, ITALY  
14:28 ITA**

The shops had still been closed for the midday break by the time they arrived—a little breathless, a little more rumpled—in Manarola, the next town in the chain of the five villages. They’d grabbed bottles of water and had decided, in lieu of having other plans, that they might as well continue wandering. Chuck personally was the most relaxed he had been in months, possibly years. That was, until Sarah’s adventurous side started getting the better of her and, clearly bored, she wandered out onto one of the large boulders that cast out into the sea.

“You coming?” she called over her shoulder.

“You’ll protect me from falling off and dying, right?” he asked, picking his way across the rock, which wasn’t the best surface for walking. It was also a climb, which made it worse.

“It’s not _that_ dangerous. You could jump off and go for a swim.” Sarah leaned forward over the edge to get a good look. “Water looks nice.”

Chuck imagined his bloody, mangled corpse being dragged to shore by dolphins. Still, with Sarah so completely nonchalant, it was hard to stay back and save face. He moved forward, swallowing hard.

“You have to admit, the view’s a little better out here,” Sarah said.

That, Chuck could agree with. The rock was situated at a spot where the path curved inward toward the mountain, forming a picturesque little cove. It jutted out far enough to where they could see around the corner, giving them dual views of the villages behind them and the cove in front of them. It was a little like being stuck in two worlds, if he thought about it. He wondered if that was poetic or not.

Sarah nudged him, smiling up at him. “Scared?”

“That I’ll slip on this rock and hit my head and forget everything that’s happened to us in the past twenty-four hours? You bet.” Chuck managed to return her smile. The rock wasn’t as uneven as he had thought, and it was a little thrilling to be up there.

“Don’t worry. I’d make you remember. Even if I had to beat it out of you.”

“You say the sweetest things,” Chuck said, though he was laughing. He eyed the water below; truth be told, it didn’t look that frightening from this angle. Plus, mid-afternoon had warmed the day so that his shirt was sticking to his back. A mischievous notion began to take hold. He glanced sideways at Sarah.

She apparently didn’t notice, as she was once again looking out to sea. He’d have to figure out how to dump their cell phones, Chuck thought, as he didn’t think Casey would appreciate having to find them new phones when saltwater destroyed the first ones. Was there a way to do that without giving away his plan?

Sarah glanced at him; quickly he schooled his features, hoping that his thoughts weren’t showing on his face. But Sarah’s smile was one of genuine happiness. “Chuck,” she said. “I think you should probably kiss me now.”

“Just probably?”

“Okay. Definitely. Definitely, you should kiss me right now.”

He promptly forgot all about his evil plans. “This is awesome,” he said, stepping carefully toward her since she was near the edge. She was also standing on an outcropping that made her slightly taller than him—which felt strange, but nice. Smiling, he leaned in…and went flying backwards as she gave him a gentle push. For a second, there was nothing but the feeling of freefall, his heart caught in his throat as he automatically straightened his body to hit the water. He thought he heard the distinctive note of her laughter just before he hit.

The water was _cold_. It sent a shock through his system, but thankfully he didn’t shout and start swallowing seawater. Instead, he clawed his way to the surface and glared up at the rock. Sarah, of course, was bent over from laughter. “Your face!”

“Not funny!” He shoved his hair out of his face. He hadn’t cut it since coming back to D.C. the second time.

“Yes, it is,” she said. The sheer force of her grin could be seen from space, Chuck was sure.

He debated the idea of climbing the rock and getting his revenge—a wet hug, perhaps—and dismissed the idea. He’d have to go to shore, over on his left, and walk back around, which meant she would have plenty of time to evade. So he glowered until, something occurred to him. “Oh, crap, my phone!”

“Right here,” Sarah said, waggling the object at him. “Grabbed your wallet, too. And my money.”

She made a deliberate show of taking the five euros she’d given him out of his wallet and tucking it in her pocket.

“Thief!” Chuck called up to her.

“Come up here and say that to my face.”

“No, you come down here so I can, then!”

“Okay.” With a shrug, Sarah kicked off her shoes, peeled out of her shirt, and arced into a graceful swan dive. She hit the water with the tiniest of splashes, of course. When she surfaced, she was grinning. “What’d you want to say to me?”

Chuck squinted at her. “You were wearing a bikini this whole time?”

“There are beaches. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. Somehow, that’s hot.” Chuck flicked water at her. “A little warning might’ve been nice.”

“You were thinking about doing the exact same thing to me,” Sarah said.

“I was…too. Okay. You got me. Hold on a second.” He managed to tread water with one arm and remove his shoe with his free hand, though it was tricky. He handed that to Sarah to hold while he repeated the process. “That’s going to take forever to dry.”

“It’s canvas. It’ll dry quick.” Sarah didn’t look apologetic in the slightest. They stored his shoes on a little shelf in the rock, though Chuck wondered if some sort of wildlife might crawl into them. Sarah, of course, seemed more than happy to distract him from that fact, so much that she nearly drowned them twice. Whenever he suggested moving to shallower water, she dunked him, clinging to his back and wrestling with him. They swam around, splashing at each other, cavorting, acting like lunatics, until the very real possibility of a cramp sprang up. With a put-upon sigh, Sarah directed Chuck to head back to shore while she climbed up to gather their things on the rock.

“Are you sure that’s safe?”

“Yes.” But even with the caution about their legs cramping up, she took her time kissing him. “Go on. I’ll meet you on the beach, we can dry out.”

He stayed where he was, though, treading water and watching Sarah scale the rock face. She turned to give him a perplexed look. “Why haven’t you gone yet? This is child’s play.”

“The view’s better from here.”

She laughed and wiggled her ass at him before finding a new hand-hold.

He came to regret his lack of shoes. This wasn’t a sandy beach of Southern California or even the one he and Sarah had jogged down near Athens. These beaches were rocks, pounded smooth by years of water, but painful nonetheless. He winced and flinched his way across the beach, heading for the bottom of the rock wall. The stones were larger there, good for resting. After so long in the cold water, the sunlight felt like a boon.

Sarah, of course wearing shoes, found him just as he was stripping out of his T-shirt and laying it out to dry on a rock. She paused as he turned. “What is it?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she said, breezily. “Water?”

“Please.”

Something about the beach seemed to call for laziness. Clearly, the others enjoying the sunshine agreed, for there were groups clustered on the larger rocks, laying out and letting the sunlight work its magic. Chuck crouched to lay out his shoes, making sure that the tongues were sticking out so that the insides would get as dry as they could. Even so, he imagined he would probably be squelching the rest of the way to Corniglia.

When he turned again, Sarah suddenly found something in the sky interesting. That was strange. As was the too-innocent look on her face as she paid an inordinate amount of attention to the sole cloud in the sky. It was almost like she had been…no, that couldn’t…she’d been checking him out! Chuck nearly gaped at first her and then himself, but thankfully common sense made him shut his mouth. He sat up a little straighter, feeling a sense of something he couldn’t determine. Pride? Maybe not that far, but he was definitely flattered.

Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised. He’d already discovered that morning that Sarah was _far_ more sex-crazed than she’d given any hint of in the past—probably because she’d stood by her word at letting them take it slow during their first go-round in dating—and she _had_ had a sex dream about him within hours of meeting him.

She was either crazy or maybe he was a little more attractive than he thought. Testing, he flexed a little—and his whole charade nearly broke as he thought of the volleyball game in _Top Gun_ , one of his and Morgan’s favorite scenes to mock. He doubted that anybody would ever try to play sand volleyball on a rocky beach like this.

Sarah looked over. “What is it?”

“Nothing, nothing. Just thought of something.”

Instead of asking him about it, though, she tilted her head and considered him. “Are you flexing?”

He still was. “No.”

“Uh-huh.”

Since Sarah was smiling at him, he couldn’t relax without giving himself away, so he found a spot on a rock and continued flexing. “Oh, I think you got a text message,” she said, turning away to grab his phone. Chuck immediately sagged, and tried to ignore the amusement in her eyes as she handed over the phone.

The message was from Devon, an update on Ellie’s condition. Apparently they’d been told they would be leaving D.C., for it ended with, “Looking forward to seeing you.”

“Going to give them a call?” Sarah asked.

Chuck, since the beach called for it anyway, moved over to the biggest of the stones and reclined back against it. This was millions of miles away from Siberia, he thought. He was wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, lying on a beach in Italy. “In a little while. It seems unfair to call her from a beach while she’s in the hospital recovering from shrapnel wounds.”

“We’ll get you some sackcloth and ashes for when you do call, then,” Sarah said, dumping sunscreen on her palm and beginning with her shoulders

“Ha, ha,” Chuck said. Though he wanted to keep watching Sarah, he felt his eyes begin to drift closed. The swim had worn him out, not quite to exhaustion, but to the point of drowsy relaxation. Lying down on the rock with the sunlight warming him only made him feel sleepier. He smiled as he felt Sarah settle against him a minute later, using his chest as a pillow. “Gah! Your hair’s cold.”

“Sorry. Do you want me to move?”

“I’ll get over it,” he said, already starting to fall asleep. He felt her laugh rather than heard it, and lulled by the sensation and the warmth, started to drift off. 

“Chuck?”

“Hmm?” he asked.

She moved around, probably trying to get more comfortable. “You look good when you flex.”

“Thanks.” She smelled like sunscreen and saltwater. It was pleasant.

“Of course, you look good when you don’t, too. Just for the record.”

Chuck was smiling as the nap finally won out.

**13 JULY 2008  
IL NIDO D’AMORE  
23:39 ITA**

Sarah had been right: the bed _was_ ridiculously hard. He’d been distracted the previous evening—and probably in some sort of state of dazed shock—but now, Chuck couldn’t get comfortable. He should be comfortable, he knew. In fact, he should be exhausted, given the level of intensity in their after dinner activities, but the mattress was like a rock. Maybe Sarah had had it right when she’d said the floor might be better. He turned over to tell her exactly that.

Her side of the bed was empty. Wary, he lifted his head; he hadn’t heard her leave. For one brief, terrifying moment, he remembered the last time he’d woken up to find her part of the bed empty. She’d left him for days, and all hell had broken loose.

And he really was acting paranoid, Chuck thought. She’d probably gone to the bathroom or something, and he wouldn’t have heard her because she was a ninja. Keeping that in mind, he rolled over, trying to find a comfortable spot, any comfortable spot in the mattress. There wasn’t one, but he dozed off again.

When he woke again twenty minutes later, the bed was still empty, apart from him. He rolled out of bed and pulled on shorts once again. He had a fleeting thought that she might have abandoned him for the couch, the traitor, but the living room was empty, as was the kitchen. The bathroom light was on, though, and the door was slightly ajar. Worried, he pushed it open farther, hoping that Sarah wasn’t leaning over the toilet.

She wasn’t, though she was in the bathroom. She sat on the floor, leaning back against the bathtub, her arms wrapped around her legs and her head down. She had the old book of poetry, the one Chuck had wondered about, in front of her feet.

“Sarah?” he asked, and winced when her head snapped up. “Is…everything okay? It’s not the shellfish, is it? I thought those oysters looked a little suspect.”

“I’m not sick,” Sarah said. “Then, um, why are you in the bathroom?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Okay.” He lingered in the doorway, still half-asleep and now very confused. “Do you want some company?”

She moved a shoulder, which he took for acquiescence. The problem lay in where to sit: he didn’t want to sit on the toilet, and he definitely didn’t want to remain standing in the doorway and towering over her. With an inward shrug, he dropped to all fours, crawling across the tiles so that he could squeeze himself in between Sarah and the sink. “Something up?” he asked.

She didn’t reply.

“Well,” he said, because he couldn’t figure out how to decipher the look on her face, “you should know: our bed really, really sucks.”

She smiled. “It’s awful.”

“It left awful behind at a fork in the road ten miles back. Our bed is like the demon spawn of all terrible beds.”

That got the giggle he’d been hoping for. “Flip you for the couch.”

“No dice, since I know with you, the flipping is literal.”

“And besides, you’re a gentleman.”

“Not about that bed, I’m not. It’s the Worst, and I say that with a capital W.”

“We could always share the couch,” Sarah said, nibbling on her bottom lip. “Just throwing that out there.”

“Sold,” Chuck said. “I’m glad we got that settled. I was a little worried.”

“You were?”

“You said you were going to flip me.” 

Sarah smiled, just a small one that showed no teeth, and rested her head on his shoulder. She curled a hand around his bicep. “I’d have kissed it better.”

“That’s very kind.” Chuck looked around the bathroom, which wasn’t anything special. “You know, I like the ambiance. It’s soothing in a very taupe sort of way. I can see why you picked it for your thinking spot. Speaking of thinking, what’s on your mind? Have I said something stupid already? It wouldn’t be a record by any means, I know.”

Sarah shook her head. Because she was still leaning against him, her hair tickled the back of his shoulder. “I needed to think. No, no, don’t go. It’s fine. I don’t need to be alone.”

Since he’d been about to offer to leave her alone to her thoughts, he let out a half-laugh. “You know me too well,” he said, settling back against the tub, no matter how cold it felt against his spine.

“Sometimes. Other times, you’re a complete mystery.”

“Really? I think that about you all the time.”

“Well, I _am_ a complete mystery, so…” 

“Maybe not a complete one,” Chuck said. “A partial mystery. Hmm, no, that makes you sound like you’re not a whole person.”

“Some days, I think I am,” Sarah said, her voice quiet.

Surprise made him turn his head to look down at her, though all he could see was the side of her head and her ear. That had sounded far more honest than he had expected. “What do you mean?”

“It’s nothing.”

It hadn’t been nothing, Chuck knew, but he said, “Okay,” and let the silence return. He turned over possibilities in his mind, trying to figure out what she could have meant by that. Maybe it had been an offhand comment and he was reading too much into it, or perhaps this was something that went much deeper.

Next to him, Sarah began to shake. He looked down, alarmed, but it turned out to be laughter. “I can,” she said, and took a deep breath to try and stop laughing. “I can _hear_ your brain working.”

He felt a flush begin to start at his sternum. “It doesn’t really stop,” he said. “You’re pretty much the only one who’s ever turned it off.”

Sarah lifted her head. “Oh, is that so?”

“You must have missed the thousand times I nearly walked into a wall because you smiled at me.”

“I just thought you were clumsy,” Sarah said, elbowing him in the ribs.

“Only around you.”

“You know, when you asked me out, I did a little dance, and I tripped over something. It was pretty embarrassing.” 

“You did?” He blinked at her.

“Of course. So you’re not the only clumsy one.”

“Look at us,” Chuck said, feeling delight course through him and make the room a little brighter. “A pair of clumsy mysteries.” Sitting on the bathroom floor, he added silently, as that fact hadn’t passed his notice. “Guess this was meant to be.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said, though she didn’t sound sure.

“You don’t think it is?”

“I…it’s complicated.”

“My brain’s always working,” Chuck said. “Though I never really have answers. I could give figuring it out a try, whatever it is.”

Sarah sighed. “It’s silly. I’m probably trying to sabotage myself. We should forget it.”

“Oh, I’m an expert on self-sabotage,” Chuck said, faking enthusiasm. “I’ve had a lot of experience. What’s on your mind?”

It took Sarah a minute to gather her thoughts, apparently, for she didn’t move. When she did, however, she lifted her head and released his arm, even scooting a couple of inches away to put some space between them. She turned toward him, though. “It’s like you said, ‘Guess we’re meant to be.’ And I don’t know, sometimes I feel like…I didn’t have a choice? Like, I met you in the bunker and then you were just always there. I’d forget to think about you every once in awhile, but never for very long. And it wasn’t things you see in those romantic comedies or anything. I’d wonder what you were doing, or what you would think of something I’d seen, and little things like that. I was a little convinced I was going crazy.”

“Why?” Chuck asked. He wondered things like that about people all the time. Maybe it was part of his being put away from society for five years, though.

“Because that’s never been how my mind works. I grew up always on the move, never really getting to know people—other than how to play them, that is. When I became a spy, they capitalized on that. If I made a connection, it was somebody like Carina, who’s crazy, or Dave, who’s afraid of me.” Sarah pushed her hand through her hair and left it there, resting her elbow on her knee. “I never thought I’d ever have anything approaching a normal relationship or normal feelings for a guy.”

“And you picked me,” Chuck said. It was still daunting, in an impossible way, but he liked to think he was learning to accept the impossible as just another thing involved with having a life with Sarah.

“No, I didn’t,” Sarah said. “That’s the thing: it wasn’t a conscious choice. I didn’t pick you. It just happened.”

“Like fate?” Chuck asked.

“Yeah.” Sarah wrinkled her nose.

“What’s so wrong with fate? It led us here.” Chuck looked around. “And when I say here, I mean _here_ as in where we are metaphorically, rather than physically, which is the bathroom, a fact that I am still very curious about, if I might add.”

“You’re a lot more Zen about this than I expected,” Sarah said.

Chuck didn’t have a good answer for that, so he shrugged. “It’s a little hard to believe how much you like me. I always want to ask you _why_. But I should know better than that. Ellie was always fond of saying, ‘We feel what we feel.’”

“Even when it should be completely implausible,” Sarah said, sighing as she leaned her shoulder back against the tub.

“That just makes it more fun.” Chuck considered this. “Also, it’s a bit of a relief.”

“How so?”

“Well, if even _you_ are confused about why you love me, it actually makes it easier to accept.”

Sarah flicked him. “Stop that. I have loads of reasons.”

Chuck raised his eyebrows. “I thought you didn’t pick me.”

Sarah opened her mouth, obviously to argue that point, and went still. Her mouth shut with a snap, and she began to giggle. “Clever. You’re clever. Good one.”

“Does it matter how we got our start?” Chuck asked, lowering his eyebrows as the question came out more rhetorical than he had planned. He knew he overthought everything. Paranoia and life experience had robbed him of his ability to simply accept things, but knowing that Sarah had worries and reservations about them somehow made it easier. It brought to mind how she’d once told him she enjoyed being the optimist for once. He just wished there didn’t have to be a pessimist to make that happen. “We got here. And I’m happy we did.”

“Me, too. Though I have to admit, I’m freaking out a little.”

“I thought that was my job,” Chuck said.

“Trust me, I would love nothing more than to give it back to you.” Sarah leaned in, kissing him slowly. “Or maybe not. Maybe we should leave the freaking out to somebody else and just be happy.”

“I will do my best,” Chuck said, moving closer to her. He winced as he bashed the back of his elbow into the bathtub. “Seriously. Why are we in a bathroom?”

“Oh. I was going to take a bath. I got distracted.” Sarah picked up the book at her feet, which Chuck had forgotten about during their talk. She pulled the Orion ads out and handed the book to Chuck, absently. “I wanted to look over them again. I don’t want us to walk into a trap.”

Chuck, however, was more focused on the book. “What _is_ this?” He turned it over to look at the back cover. It looked well-worn and well-read.

“Cipher,” Sarah said, and her voice told him she wasn’t truly listening. “Dad gave it to me when I was nine. We used to send coded messages—still do, sometimes. Chuck, there’s something a little off about these ads.”

“Poetry, rea—wait, something off? Like what?”

“I don’t know.” Sarah’s voice rang with frustration. “All I know is that there’s something. I can’t tell what it is. I was sitting here for like half an hour trying to figure it out, but it’s…it’s like it’s just on the tip of my tongue, you know?”

Chuck had pulled the clippings out of his wallet time and again. Apart from the fact that Orion knew he was a nerd, there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to them. But he more than understood the frustration of being so close to a solution and unable to find it in the darkness. “Why don’t you sleep on it?” he asked, holding the book out to her. He saw the Jack of Hearts peeking out from a page, and it sent a pleasant fluttery feeling through his belly. “Might help to have a clearer head in the morning.”

Sarah took the book back. “Okay.” She let him pull her to her feet, but instead of moving toward the couch, she wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his chest.

“Sarah?” 

“Hm?”

“Still in the bathroom.”

“Oh, fine.” But her eyes were mischievous as she pulled him toward the couch, and he figured it would be awhile before there would be any actual sleeping.

**14 JULY 2008  
IL NIDO D’AMORE  
18:09 ITA**

“Ellie, I’m fine,” Chuck said for the third time. “Seriously, you can stop asking. I’m the one that should be asking that about _you_. You’re the one in the hospital, after all.”

“Don’t remind me,” Ellie said. Her voice was a little weak, but Chuck had nonetheless been overjoyed to hear it on the other end of the phone when he’d picked up. “You’d think I’d be used to the smell. But it turns out when you’re a patient, the hospital smells different.”

“You’ll be out soon, right?” Chuck lowered himself onto the couch, which was only marginally more comfortable than the bed, much to his dismay. He’d just returned from a hike with Casey, which meant he was hungry and could use a shower, but Ellie trumped both of those.

“Couple of days, then a few days in physical therapy and then they’re taking me to wherever you are. Where _are_ you?”

“I can’t tell you. But I can tell you, you’re going to love it.” Chuck glanced out the front window. “Seriously, Ellie. It’s gorgeous.”

“Maybe I’ll get married there,” Ellie said, and broke into a coughing fit that hurt Chuck’s heart. She seemed to rally pretty quickly. “Always kind of wanted a destination wedding. Maybe we could get Devon’s parents and brothers flown in.”

“It’s beautiful enough,” Chuck said. “How are you, really?”

“I’m okay, I promise. You can stop asking that, too.”

Chuck grinned. Ellie’s grouchiness actually made him feel better than anything else could have.

“Tell me about what’s going on out there,” Ellie said. “You sound different. How are the others? I imagine Casey’s not doing well with sitting around.”

He actually was, Chuck thought. He’d expected to find a grumpy, agitated Casey, which was why he’d suggested the hike, but Casey had actually seemed more thoughtful than anything else. Granted, it probably helped that there might be the opportunity for gunplay whenever they set up their meet with Orion. But Casey had also radiated something like a sense of contentment.

It had been bizarre on far too many levels to count.

“Casey’s getting along, though I’m not sure he likes the food much. Sarah’s doing good, too. She sends her—”

“Wait a second,” Ellie said, cutting him off. “Chuck, what’s going on?”

“What?” Chuck asked, alarm flowing through him.

“Are you and Sarah together?”

Chuck squinted, though he knew his sister was thousands of miles away. “You got that from ‘Sarah’s doing good, too?’”

“No, no, not that. Geez, Chuck, keep up. I told you something was different! You sound happy, Chuck. Does that mean you and Sarah are finally together?”

Now he was beyond confused. “I thought you didn’t like Sarah.”

“Stop avoiding the question.”

“I—yes. We’re together. As of a couple of days ago.”

“Yes!” Ellie said, and Chuck worried she might pull her stitches. “I _so_ knew it.”

“I’m really confused,” Chuck felt the need to say.

“Chuck, this is great. You have to convince her to be a bridesmaid. She turned me down the last time I asked, something about not wanting to make things awkward with you, but now that that’s not a problem, you _have_ to convince her.”

“I…” Chuck looked up as Sarah came in from the bedroom, wearing a pair of reading glasses he’d never known she needed before. They’d been discovering a lot of little things about each other over the past couple of days, things even traveling together extensively hadn’t taught them. And, he thought, there was a lifetime worth of things left to find out. “I’ll do my best.”

 _Is that Ellie_? Sarah mouthed at him. He nodded, a bit helplessly. Wordlessly, she held out a hand.

“El, she’s here and she wants to talk to you. If you need anything, give me a call, okay?”

“You have so much to tell me when I get there,” Ellie said. “Love you, bye!”

He handed the phone to Sarah, feeling bewildered. Was the difference so obvious in his voice alone?

“Hey, Ellie,” Sarah said into the phone, settling in on the couch next to Chuck. “How are you feeling? Oh, really? He told you that? Hm.” She glanced at Chuck, clearly amused.

Since it looked like Ellie was going to talk for awhile, Chuck pushed himself off of the couch and went to fetch them some water. Sarah had declined the offer of the hike earlier to stay in and work on her computer, as the Orion problem was still bothering her. But he wondered if he should attempt to cook dinner for them or if they should hit a restaurant.

It _would_ be easier for somebody else to cook. He looked over at Sarah, who was wearing only one of his shirts and her underwear. On second thought, maybe dining in was better. They wouldn’t have to get dressed.

She hung up the phone ten minutes later and smiled at him. “So, Ellie’s a little excited,” she said.

“A little?”

Sarah held her thumb and forefinger close together and managed to keep a straight face for three seconds. She then burst out laughing. “Okay, maybe a little more than that.”

“Yeah, no kidding. My ear still hurts.”

“Aw, poor thing,” Sarah said, kissing said ear. “Have a good hike?”

“Surprisingly, yeah. Any luck on your end?”

“None whatsoever. I think I just want to relax and watch a movie and not think about it.”

“I can get behind that plan. Any preferences?”

“Nothing by that guy we watched the other day, with the explosions.”

“No _Transformers_ , check.” Chuck picked up his laptop.

“ _Transformers_? Is that like, some kind of tool?”

“No, the director is some kind of tool. Transformers are robots in disguise.” When Sarah still looked puzzled, he shook his head. “They hide themselves as cars. I was so obsessed with that show and _Thundercats_ when I was a kid. I had all of the action figures: Lion-O, Optimus Prime, Cheetara, Starscream. Hell, I even had a Snarf, though I think that may have been Morgan’s.”

“Wait a second,” Sarah said.

“Yes, I know. Really big nerd.” Chuck began pulling up the website where he downloaded most of his movies.

“No, that’s not what—what’d you call it? Optimus Prime?” Sarah leaned forward, moving around papers on the coffee table, obviously looking for something.

“Yeah, he’s the leader. He turns into a semi-truck. Why?” Chuck asked, watching her. 

Sarah finally located what she was looking for: her poetry cipher book. She flipped through the pages until she found the Orion clippings, an odd look on her face.

“What is it?” Chuck asked.

“Chuck, this is going to sound weird because you’ve never talked about him before, but what does your dad do?”

“My dad?” That was out of left field. Chuck tried to realign his thoughts, but nothing seemed to fit. Why did Sarah have such an intense look on her face. “He was…some kind of computer programming guy. I think the nicest way to put it is eccentric. He was never really there, even before he left me and Ellie. Why are you asking me this?”

“Because I think I figured out why Orion wants to help you,” Sarah said. She took a deep breath and licked her lips. “Chuck, I think he’s your dad.”


	68. In Venice, In Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life is either a great adventure or nothing. — _Helen Keller_

**25 JULY 2008  
VENICE, ITALY  
13:01 ITA**

“Next time I pick the place for the meet, please shoot me,” Chuck said as he took a generous pull from the water bottle they were sharing. He handed it back to Sarah, who took it gratefully.

“Not your fault,” she said, once she’d finished drinking. She’d been wearing a summer-weight blazer, but she’d stripped down to a tank top, her skin glistening with sweat just like his. “Ellie wanted to see Venice, too.”

Chuck brushed a hand over his brow, and it came away dripping. “I don’t care how disgusting the water smells, I’m still tempted to jump in.”

“I’m not jumping in to save your ass when whatever sewer monsters that live down there drag you under,” Sarah said. “No matter how good the sex is.”

Chuck laughed. “Living with a nerd has really rubbed off on you,” he said, and they began to walk back over the Rialto bridge, which was one of the most crowded places in the city. It hadn’t stopped him from wanting to see it, though.

“God help me,” Sarah said, but she didn’t sound upset. She grabbed his hand, twisting her fingers around his like she did now whenever they walked somewhere. They’d begun to differentiate the locals from the tourists in their temporary home in Riomaggiore; Chuck wondered what the locals thought, if they figured Chuck and Sarah were on some sort of extended honeymoon—which sent a burst of pleasure through him—or if they just regarded the pair as together for a long time and happy. Sarah gave him the smile she never wore around Casey now. “Okay. Maybe I’d save you.”

“Because of the sex?”

“Chiefly.”

“I feel so cheap. Only wanted for my body.”

“Your mind, too. Since you rarely turn it off, and all. Speaking of which, how much sleep _did_ you get last night? Every time I woke up, you were awake.”

“I got a couple hours,” Chuck said, not mentioning that the couple of hours had been patchy at best. He felt like crap, which wasn’t helped by the fact that Venice felt like a sauna after their ocean-breeze-cooled paradise of the Riviera they’d left behind. “I think I kind of missed our bed.”

“What? The rock mattress of torture? You’re kidding.”

“It holds a special place in my heart,” Chuck said. They both knew why he’d been awake all night; not only were Ellie and Devon flying in to meet them in Venice, but they had set up the meet with Orion. Since they weren’t entirely sure that Orion was Stephen Bartowski—and it had been a huge mental adjustment on Chuck’s part to think that his absent-minded father who’d never really been there might have created the Intersect—they hadn’t told Ellie. She’d always been closer to their father than him, and Chuck didn’t want to get her hopes up.

In that way she had of understanding him without needing the words, Sarah tightened her grip for a second. “Want to go meet Casey? He should be finished setting up.”

“Sure. You know, when we promised him he could bring any firepower he liked, maybe we should have included a clause or something about gun size,” Chuck said, as they made a left and began the winding trip through alleys and courtyards that would take them across Venice and to where Casey waited at the meet location.

“Don’t let him hear you talk bad about Bitchin’ Betty.”

“But that’s exactly what I mean. Does he really need the mini-gun?”

“He’s Casey. In his mind, he needs it.”

“His mind is a scary place,” Chuck said.

Sarah handed him the water bottle. “You finish it off.”

“You sure?”

“I did the last one. We can buy another one next time we pass a shop or something.”

With a shrug, Chuck polished off the water. “Damn, it’s hot,” he said, unnecessarily. He liked Venice. He liked how everything was brown brick, but each building was slightly different, how it seemed like a tourist town time had forgotten. He especially liked how the town had seemingly been built by a madman cartographer, or at least a drunk one. And for some reason, he loved the idea of streets of water, no matter how much they smelled when it was almost August.

Best of all, he liked walking through the town with Sarah, even though she’d already been there before and had seen most of it. It was exciting to share travel when they weren’t being chased or expected to run a mission. Okay, that wasn’t precisely correct, he thought. They had a mission. They were going to meet Orion. They were going to see if Orion was Chuck’s father. They were going to see if Orion could remove the Intersect.

They were going to see if Orion could remove Lincoln.

“So what’s really on your mind?” Sarah asked.

He should have known she wouldn’t drop the subject. Maybe she was right not to. As much as he had a habit of keeping his worries to himself, these days, he needed to get better at telling more of the full story. So he stopped by a cistern in a courtyard that was as eaten by acid rain and time as the rest, and said what he’d worried about for far longer than he knew.

“What if Orion can’t do it? If he’s my dad, if he’s not, either way, what if he can’t remove Lincoln?”

“Then we keep looking,” Sarah said.

“That’s it?”

“You and I are the only ones that know the Lincoln phrases,” Sarah said. “All of your research said that Graham only knew the same ones I did. And if he knew more, don’t you think he would have used them?”

Chuck remembered how cold Graham’s eyes had been on their final meeting, hours before the man had been killed. “Maybe.”

“Maybe? No. He would have. He was my mentor. I know how he worked, and I knew how to work him. And besides, it doesn’t matter. Ellie’s going to get that stuff out of your head. If Orion is your dad, that means he’s a Bartowski, too, and you’re a tireless lot.” Sarah paused. “Which can be a very good thing, in some cases.”

Chuck felt a blush rise. “Hey, that was at least half your fau—”

“Either way,” Sarah said, laughing now. “We’ll figure it out. Together. And then I’ll go become Instructor Walker and you’ll do that video game thingie you tried to explain the other day.”

Since she’d grown bored of his admittedly over-technical explanation and had distracted him the best way she knew how, he had to figure “video game thingie” was the closest she was going to come to understanding Dave’s business idea. It made him want to laugh, but he didn’t mind.

But that was the best case scenario, and there were far too many chances for this to go wrong. If this fell through, Sarah was still CIA, he was still joint NSA/CIA, and they were exactly where they’d started. “It feels a bit late to ask this,” he said, “but you do know what you’ve signed on for, right? And I’m not just talking about me, here. My sister in wedding planner mode is included in this package, as are all of my issues, the fact that my best friend is a gaming deejay who has no idea that I’m a spy, and oh, right, I’m pretty sure we have Casey for a pet.”

“He does growl a lot,” Sarah said, sounding amused. “But at least he’s house-trained.”

“And easily placated by shiny firearms. But on the serious side, you’re okay with what you’re getting into?”

“I have to be,” Sarah said, folding her arms over her chest and giving him the _look_. “After all, I’m it for you. You’d be lost without me.”

Chuck groaned, as she’d brought these words up at least four times in the past two weeks. “One throwaway phrase, and you never forget it for the rest of your life.”

“Right, because you never repeated ‘Just say the word’ at me.” Sarah gave him a quick kiss. “But here’s a phrase that comes in handy: one thing at a time. We’ll meet Casey, we’ll pick up Ellie, and then we’ll handle Orion. Just like that, see?”

“I have a feeling it won’t be ‘just like that,’” Chuck said, though some of his worries had subsided. Not all of them, of course, but he suspected Sarah knew that. Just like he suspected she’d made her peace with it, as well.

“With you, Chuck, it never is,” Sarah said, and, grabbing his hand, began to pull him along. “But that’s the beauty of it all.”

Casey was waiting for them in the water taxi he’d procured “legally” (as legally as paying a driver to be scarce for a few hours could be) at the meet location. Though he gave them the typical sneer at seeing them hold hands yet again, he didn’t have anything to say about it. “Anything interesting?”

“Nobody followed us,” Sarah said, climbing nimbly onto the boat. “Any trouble on your end?”

“Betty’s acting up. I had to leave her behind.”

“I’m sorry, Casey,” Chuck said, though he wasn’t terribly apologetic about the thought of Casey meeting his father without an M-134 mini-gun in tow. “Is she going to get better?”

“She’s a gun, you moron, not a person.”

“But you call it a her and—never mind. My mistake.” Chuck settled back against the front of the cabin. Taxis in Venice had a rain-proof area for passengers, but he liked staying out in the open, watching all of the fascinating buildings go by. Besides, Sarah was out here, just a couple feet away, as Casey piloted the boat out into the canal. “Ellie’s got to be going nuts. She’s been so excited about seeing Venice for forever.”

“I’m sure she is.” Sarah brushed at a flyaway strand of hair, which was a useless gesture as the wind tossed the blond around her head. Though he knew she probably noticed every little detail around them, and her spy senses were telling her a thousand details his own brain automatically filtered as well, she looked relaxed. She glanced at him with a secret smile, raising an eyebrow. “Do you think Casey would notice if we—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Walker,” Casey said without looking over.

Chuck and Sarah laughed.

“Airport straight ahead,” Casey said after twenty minutes had passed.

“Ready?” Sarah asked Chuck. 

The nerves were about to eat him from the inside out, but Chuck gamely put on a smile for her. “Even if I’m not, it’s going to be okay, right?” he asked.

The look on Sarah’s face was one he recognized well. It was the same one she’d given him right before he’d left the bunker, and when they had gone to D.C. the first time. A hundred times, he’d seen that expression on her face, and he’d probably see it thousands of times more, if they were lucky. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.

His smile turned genuine. “Then I’m ready.”

Casey rolled his eyes at the both of them as they drove through Venice, off to face the next adventure together.

### The End.


End file.
